heh i remember the good old disks.. they were the size of a washing machine, every once in a while you would hear some horrible cranckling sound come out of it, we used to call the cleaners to come in open the lid and vacuum clean it from all the dust and debris, 5min with hoover did magic!
nowadays with the disk capacity being so intensly small, you do need to know what you are doing with the platters.
for example ibas purchases every single disk model for spare parts, should only the platers be left, it would replace it with an identical model and attempt to read the platters. sometimes they try to simply just read the platters which is a very hard task as each I/O board has a different writting pattern on the platters. this is done mostly when the casing is damaged for example crushed or burned, even then the chances of retrieving the data in whole is slim. all this requires a dust/particle free facility, yes men in suits as if ebola is on the loose would be handling it. such facilities are not cheap to maintain.
the chances of finding an identical model is very slim, so either say goodbye to your data or perpare yourself to pay a fortune.
rolf wrotePadre wrotejust a hint : never open the drive :P
only swap the I/O board if u find a similar one (as noted by Bash).
Dont listen to him. Magnetic platters make great decoration, for hanging off the ceiling or sticking on the wall ;)
BTW, I opened a 12 megabytes drive once (yes, 12, dont ask...), worked on the head (it was stuck) then closed it back and it was still working 1 year later.
( PS: Dont open your drive, Im just kidding. Geek humor. )
