Take disc from one hard drive, and put it in another. Is this possible?

[Guest]

The hard drive in my eMachines EM250 died over a year ago. I was getting this message below when attempting to boot Windows:

A new hard drive solved the problem. On the broken hard drive i had thousands of photos and videos, taken at automotive events around the UK. I lost them all when the drive went wrong.

Determinded to retrieve my content off the failed hard drive, i opened it up and inspected the internals. Everything looked fine, but i did find a thin plastic mesh material resting on the surface of the disc; around 0.5cm x 2cm in size. I removed it, but i cannot try the hard drive again in the computer because i intentionally damaged the circuit on the base so that the drive wouldn't work again. I did this because i was going to throw it away, and i wanted to be sure my data was secure before chucking it. (Stupid idea, i know!)

The internals of the hard drive look very easy to dismantle, everything just unscrews. To remove the disc it would be easy. I thought that if i bought a cheap 40GB SATA 2.5" drive off Ebay (Less than £10), took out the disc and replaced it with mine, it might work, allowing me to get my data back?

Hopefully someone with a bit more knowledge on the subject could tell me if this would work. I don't know anything about hard drives.

Thanks!

 

[Tradesman1]

Can give it a try 😉 have done similar to recover data, really should be done in a Clean Room (sealed) but have been able to recover most data on a couple of occasions

 

[RealBeast]

The hard drive in my eMachines EM250 died over a year ago. I was getting this message below when attempting to boot Windows:

A new hard drive solved the problem. On the broken hard drive i had thousands of photos and videos, taken at automotive events around the UK. I lost them all when the drive went wrong.

Determinded to retrieve my content off the failed hard drive, i opened it up and inspected the internals. Everything looked fine, but i did find a thin plastic mesh material resting on the surface of the disc; around 0.5cm x 2cm in size. I removed it, but i cannot try the hard drive again in the computer because i intentionally damaged the circuit on the base so that the drive wouldn't work again. I did this because i was going to throw it away, and i wanted to be sure my data was secure before chucking it. (Stupid idea, i know!)

The internals of the hard drive look very easy to dismantle, everything just unscrews. To remove the disc it would be easy. I thought that if i bought a cheap 40GB SATA 2.5" drive off Ebay (Less than £10), took out the disc and replaced it with mine, it might work, allowing me to get my data back?

Hopefully someone with a bit more knowledge on the subject could tell me if this would work. I don't know anything about hard drives.

Thanks!

If you really want the files back, I would send the drive to Seagate Recovery HERE. They are far more likely to succeed than you and they work on any brand drive.

 

[Guest]

Thank you very much for the rapid responses chaps.

RealBeast - I would much rather do the job myself and save the money. To do it through Seagate it would cost way too much. I don't think it would be worth going to all that trouble of setting up an account on thier website, registering credit card details, sending it off, waiting ages to get it back and loosing loads of cash in the process.

Tradesman1 - You said that it would be possible to use another hard drive with the disc, which is excellent news. If we're sure that it will work, i'll definitely give it a go. Looking on the Internet right now to see if i can find any hard drives cheaper than a tenner. The less money i spend the better! Then if it doesn't work, i won't have lost a complete fortune.

Thanks!

 

[rgd1101]

as long as it is not important data, go for it.