What model HDD is this?

I have a Toshiba HDD that appears to be 30gb but its missing its cover and I can't figure out what model it is. The drive crashed years ago and I ripped the cover off and threw it away. I'm hoping to find the same model and swap out the spindles. It probably won't work but most of the photos from my first tour in Iraq are on there and I want to give it a shot. The only other information I can tell is that I bought it in a new Dell Inspiron 8200 back in April of 2002.

Thanks

 

If you've exposed the platter to the air - you're not going to get this drive working again.

If the photos are really worth it for you, send the drive as-is to a data recovery specialist. If anything is on the platters that can be saved, they'll be the ones to do it (special machines, 'clean rooms' and software).

Short of that, you will be wasting your time and money trying to get it to work by yourself. Worse, even if you get it spinning - the dust particles in the air we breathe will destroy even more of the platter's surface.

Good luck (and I'd be curious to see a couple of these photos if you do recover any!).

 

Find another of those drives and swap it over yourself. Taking the cover off of it was pretty dumb but let's hope it didn't destroy any remaining data.

 

that drive is so screwed the best chance it has is on track and they charge enough to buy a decent used car.

 

I've read that it could possibly work for a few minutes if I can get the platters off without destroying them. The drive couldn't cost more than a few bucks and if there's even a .000000001% chance that it could work then I want to try it.

So can anyone help me ID the drive?

Here's a couple photos I had sent home before the HDD crashed.

 

I can't help. Imageshack is blocked for me.

 

China? Don't you use a proxy?

 

Toshiba MK3018GAS

 

Thank you very much sir!

 

Thanks for posting a few of those images (images are what I do...).

Hope you can recover more from your HDD.

Good luck.

 

Just have to emphasis here that it is a bad idea to simply do a spindle transplant and hoping to get a few rpm's out of the drive (in which you can get any data off of it).

The smallest dust particles and other floating impurities will cause the head to crash (lose it's ability to 'fly' over the platters on a super thin cushion of air) and make you lose more data with each spin.

Especially considering that the platters have been exposed to the elements for how long now? Even if the air is perfectly filtered, the crud on the platters themselves will still make the heads crash even before the drive has reached operating speed.

Anyway, hope this works out.

 

I saw a couple of used ones (working, not for parts) on ebay completed listings for under $10, so at least it shouldn't be a costly experiment... the odds are definitely not great though.

 

yeah they can work for a few minutes in my experience the older and lower the gb the longer it lasts how ever when i took the covers off and ran it was with in a few minutes not a whole years waiting time. those platters are soooo delicate. we killed our drive with a puff a of cigarette smoke and it instadied.