How to Fix Hard Drive Platter Alignment Issue and Recover Lost Data

Within data recovery field, maybe only 5% believe that hard drive platters can be swapped one by one and most of them believe after removing the platters one by one, the platter alignment issue is generated and no data recovery is possible.

From now on, Dolphin team are offering advanced video data recovery solutions to fix the hard drive alignment issue and we call it motor balance issue. In case the motor balance is lost, the heads may read/write very slowly or impossible to read/write.

Why will the motor vibrate? HDD inner components and structure are definitely designed precisely, a minor difference may cause problems. It is like if something is put on either side of the receptacles on a balance, the receptacle with extra will have the focus and the balance will lose, the horizontal line will become bias and then the motor will start to vibrate.

If the motor loses balance, the motor will spin the platters wrongly and the tracks seem layer upon layer. Let’s draw one picture to demonstrate how it looks like. For this kind of rotating surfaces, how can the heads read/write from such platter surfaces? It can be detected slowly, impossible to read, or sometimes slow, sometimes fast, or other kinds of strange problems. When users pick up the hard drives, users can feel obviously the platters are shaking, like catching a bad cold.

HDD losing motor balance

If the motor works normally, it spins the motor properly and all the tracks on the surfaces are spinning smoothly
like how the picture shows.

hdd with motor balance

For many new hard drives with multiple platters, when the hard drive platters are contaminated or when the motor is stuck or when the hdd inner environment is severely damaged, it is necessary for users to clean the platters and swap the platters. Many drives now have dumpers between the platters and it is not possible to swap all platters at the existing fixed position at the same time and the only solution is to remove the platter one by one, to clean the platter one by one and then put the platters one by one to the donor drive. At this time, we need to adjust the motor balance and fix the platter alignment issue.

To adjust the motor balance, users need some special tools and all the requirement and detailed steps are available in the advanced platter alignment video training courses here.

Any question is welcome to [email protected] or add Dolphin skype ID: dolphin.data.lab