Help needed - none working HD.....

[jbrown]

Hi

My girlfriends HD failed the other day, with a lot of her portfolio pictures.
She has a new HD and the computers working fine.

My question is this - on a simplistic level, could transfering the failed HD platters to a new enclosure work as a means to retrieve the info.

So if I buy I cheap working drive of same size/manufacturer - say 20 gig.

Take it apart and remove it's platters. Then replace them with her failed disk's platters ( 160 gig ). Would I stand any chance of retrieving the data?

I really can't afford the £600 ish I'm being quoted to get it done professionaly.

cheers all.

 

[spinnerlys]

Do you have access to a Cleanroom, because opening the HDD case will expose the platters to dirt, which will damage them quite well once the platters start spinning again and the read/write head touches the platters.

Does the old HDD not spin at all? Not even in an external enclosure?

 

[mulo]

as the above mentions it can ruin the drive if it gets just the slightest dirty.
there are companies that does this for you, just google "data recovery services"