Getting data off taken apart hard drive

david31160 · August 19, 2016

Basically I made an idiotic mistake of taking apart a hard drive which I thought was dead but actually contained important data. Is their any way I can recover the data? The read write head and is kinda destroyed but the platters are perfectly intact except for the fact that it has fingerprints on it.

RadiatingLight · August 19, 2016

you majorly fucked up.

touching the platters is a no-no if you want your data back, same with opening up the hard drive altogether, as they are usually in a vacuum, or in some special helium blend.

honestly, your only option would be to turn to a professional data recovery service. there is no way i know of that could help you in this case

Gravemind · August 19, 2016

*facepalms*

If you touched the platter, you're more or less boned. You can try sending it off to a data recovery specialist, but an exposed platter in any environment other than a clean room, especially one that has fingerprints on it is essentially gone.