I know of several people who ended up with two dead hard drives attempting this.Quote

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Don't destroy that hard drive just yet. There is another way. Get a hard disk that has the same firmware, PCB chips, and close to the same SERIAL number. Take the PCB off the new hard disk, take the damaged PCB off next, and replace the old PCB on the old hard drive with the new hard disk's PCB, screw it back on, and it just might work again.

That is exactly what I was thinking, except replacing everything but the platters, since I suspect motor's bust, my only concern was that the new platters wouldn't get 'rejected', ie the new hard drive would simply refuse to read the platter because of some sort of incompatibility. My suspicion is that the motor is somehow screwed up. Working from the fact that there is zero resistance across my 12v and 5v to GROUND is zero, I am thinking that the insulation on the motor may have gotten screwed, and I suspect that area was extremely hot, seeing as to how there are blisters of paint on the underside of the drive in that REGION.

However my concern lies in how that happened. One of the explanations I conceive is that the motor OPERATION was physically obstructed by the reading heads, which means the platters would be damaged, especially if this happened at high speeds, then I'd expect to have a pretty big groove on those platters. According to my calculations this would be like crashing into the ground at over 200km/hour.

This could all be settled by opening it, but this would of course void the warranty and of course these drives aren't cheap.

I'm not so much AFRAID of getting dust in the drive etc, I've seen exposed (ODP frame) motors work for 20 years in really corrosive environments, and drive heads do not contact the platters, so I do not see a little dust being an issue. But I am afraid for those reading heads that lie ever so close to the platters.

rr5678, did you have an experience (with a happy ending maybe?) or perhaps know of such an article? Because I would really like to research this before I waste any more hard drives.

Thank you so much for your input

Stan