Case Study — Hard Drive Recovery
Heads stuck to the platter. Data recovered in full.
A dropped Samsung 1TB ST1000LM024 laptop drive arrived with its read/write heads seized fast to the magnetic surface — the point at which many recoveries end in a head replacement, or worse. Opened under class 10 cleanroom conditions, the heads were released undamaged and every file recovered.
The case
A drop, and a drive that wouldn't spin.
The drive was a Samsung 1TB ST1000LM024 — a 2.5" laptop mechanism built on two magnetic platters with four read/write heads.
It had been dropped. The impact drove the heads into the platter surface and left them stuck there — a classic stiction failure. The drive could no longer spin, and every attempt to power it on risked scoring the platter surface further.
At this stage a drive can go one of two ways: the heads lift cleanly, or they don't and a full head-stack replacement is needed — sometimes with scratching that limits what can ever be recovered. There was no way to know which until the drive was opened.
The case was booked in, given a case number and serial reference, and moved straight to the cleanroom. It was not powered on again outside those conditions.
In the lab
From stuck heads to a working image.
Every stage happened inside a class 10 laminar flow cleanroom cabinet — the only safe environment to open a drive in this condition.
- 01
Opened under laminar flow
The enclosure was opened inside the cabinet, with filtered air continuously flowing across the work area to keep dust off the exposed platter. This is not something to attempt outside a controlled environment — the overwhelming majority of drives opened outside a cleanroom lose their data permanently.
- 02
Heads released from the platter
The seized head stack was freed from the magnetic surface using dedicated release tooling, then lifted onto its ramp for inspection.
- 03
Inspected for damage
Under green light inspection, the sliders beneath the heads showed no visible damage and the platter surface was clear of debris — no donor head stack would be needed.
- 04
Powered up and imaged
The drive spun up and identified correctly in PC-3000, the lab's primary imaging platform. Firmware and adaptive data were backed up first, then the drive was imaged rather than accessed directly, protecting the original media from any further work.
Outcome
Full user data, one weak head identified.
The drive's user data was fully accessible for imaging. A head map was built across all four heads to guide the read strategy — head 3 was reading weak relative to the others, consistent with that side of the drive taking the greater impact energy in the drop. It was weak enough to flag, not weak enough to stop a clean image.
Not every drive in this condition comes back — stiction failures severe enough to need cleanroom disassembly are among the more serious cases the lab sees, and this one could easily have needed a donor head stack or ended in partial recovery. It didn't.
Result: 100% of the customer's data recovered, quoted at £350 including VAT.
Stuck heads, seized spindles and head crashes are all cleanroom cases — every extra power-on narrows what can be saved. Get a straight diagnosis and a fixed quote before anything else touches the drive.