how the data is stored in the platters of an hard drive?

[Gandhik]

I am a software engineer , but love to gather information about the hardware and different gadgets , currently I had an old hard drive with 80GB capacity. So I had decided it to open it. But later on thought if it is in working state it will be of no use once I open it. So I connected it with the motherboard , it shows the disk space is occupied but the data stored in it is not visible in it. I removed my old hard drive and re installed the new one. Does any one knows how to open it and can the content of such hard drives in it can be retrieved back ?

[Eru]

A hard disk which is not working is a dead hard drive. It is called as dead in the sense it is not capable to store anything in it, neither you can read, write or access the data or the files stored in it in simpler ways . There are different techniques to retrieve the data from the dead hard drives, but it is a very complicated task and should only pursued only if the data stored in it is critical data. I do not under stand why you are so much interested in opening dead hard drive.I too tried once once opening my dead hard drive but gave up.

[Erubiel]

You can open it up using a screw driver or a plier, but be carefull, once you open the case and slide it cover off , it cannot be used further. If you still are unable to open it , remove all the stickers visible on , there you will be able to locate a few number of screws . You can unscrew them with the help of screw driver. One of the hidden screw will be a a torx screw and the other will be nut bolt. Unscrew both of them then slide down the main cover to see all the inside components of a hard drive. If you ask me about a Solid hard drive , I do not have any idea hoe to uncover it .

[Felix46]

Once you have slid the main cover there you will be able to see many components made of metals. Of which one of them well be of a spherical form , it is the platter of the hard drive , it is the actual location on which the data is stored. It rotates more than thousand times per second to store the data in different locations. There is a pointed substance that moves on which is held by a spindle . The pointed substance is moved by an arm called as actuator arm on the platters to do the read and write functions. I do not have any idea how you can recover the lost data from a dead hard drive. If you do not have any important data in it , then It hin you should not waste your resources to exploit the the hard drive.