REAL Data Recovery - Linus Swaps Hard Drive Actuator!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
2,631 words · ~13 min read
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okay so you guys aren't going to believe this we're here at drive savers these guys they recover data off of
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drives um phones the clean rooms over here basically if it's got data on it
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these guys recover it and they they turn to me and
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they're like look we know you're not here for very long but i mean we don't normally do this as part
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of the tour but do you want to get do you want to get suited up and do you want to rip apart a
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hard drive and do an actuator swap in a real hard drive in a real clean room and
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i'm like what kind of stupid question is that
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that's like asking me if i want to tell you about synergy synergy 2 makes sharing one
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mouse and one keyboard between multiple computers so simple and seamless that
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anyone can use it check it out now and learn more at the link in the video
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description
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hell tell us i'm trying to dedicate should i do that oh we're making a face
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okay you know what i'm just gonna i'm gonna be a nice nice youtuber so
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inside here it's certified to be less than a hundred
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thousand point one micron particles
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per cubic meter of air
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so it's like 10 000 times cleaner regular room
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oh this is hot
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here we go oh that's a heavy door
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so the whole room is positively pressurized
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they've got uh i think it's 35 fans
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running pushing air constantly downward
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look at it look at this stuff SSD pcb you know no big deal
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it's freaking crazy
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one and a half terabyte forensic one terabyte target
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two terabyte targets dang this place is big how are you doing
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hi hi um i actually don't know where i'm going
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cool is this my station this is going to be
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your station yes sick come on up
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thank you is this like a special clean room chair it is they are all classic
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i'm okay it's really slippery
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okay maybe your suit's like better than mine but like
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i'm serious
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okay hold on okay it's like yeah this guy can't even
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sit in a chair how is he gonna fix the hard drive look some of us don't do data
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recovery every day okay he's like this is the most boring part
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like if i bleed in here is it a is it a contamination problem
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in here the theory is that it is so
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clean that i don't need to seal the drive back
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up is that right like can i just run it open correct can we run this one without
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the lid on just to show it doing it we cannot drive
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really it just has like a sensor or something no it has a little nub on the
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lid which kind of allows puts a little bit more pressure on the actuator to
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keep it down so level oh
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interesting so it's not just uh it's not just a pretty face it's
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the lid is actually functional right so what you see here this notch right
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here sits on the actuator oh wow so it
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actually holds the entire actuator assembly well down
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just gives you a little pressure from a little wall correct oh
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interesting so check this out so you've actually got four reed right heads
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because each of these platters can store data on both sides here uh what else can
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we say about this so so this guy right here holds these in
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place when it's off correct this is what we call the off platter parking ramp so the
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reed and right heads actually like are basically like they're flying
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over these spinning platters and these are going at you know up to 7 200 RPM
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these days they used to go higher in some cases but on consumer drive this goes up to 7
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200 RPM and it's basically like a like a fly flying around in a hurricane like 12
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inches off the ground like it's like it's stupid so anytime you're not
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actively reading or writing data you want them like out of the way because if
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these contact there then you got to send your drive to drive
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savers period and anything they touched they ain't
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getting that back actually that's one of the scenarios
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where you might have to do what we're about to do which is an actuator swap
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where if it accidentally makes contact the metal shards inside are so damaging
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that they could just tear apart these tiny fragile heads
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okay hit me with the next step oh it doesn't say do not eat on it but that is
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definitely desiccant and you definitely should need it you should need anything in a hard drive look at my hands are
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shaking that's as steady as i can hold it i'll just get some two-handed
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assistance in there thank you all i would have to do is drop
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this screw conveniently non-ferrous oh probably for a reason there's magnets
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in here do people typically get this right on
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their first try negative
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cool all right well i'm excited then i want to do it i'm going to pop that up
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yup a little bit jiggle it loose okay all right good yeah oh yeah cool all
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right let's do that put that inside over here yeah next step
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you're gonna remove the actuator stopper whoa yeah you can really feel like when
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you oh it like snaps into place there okay
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and the stopper is this black guy right here right okay you're gonna hold that
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right there without letting it fall off yeah and get this
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transport cone yeah and keep the head separated which is a version of this
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that we had made in-house ourselves
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very cool so what are you going to do keep that slide that between there and
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try to get the battery did i kill it not yet not that i know um
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is it probably dead now possibly but you know what let's let you
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continue with it like this first okay it doesn't matter which way you go no
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you want to bring that off close to the edge a little bit closer oh too far right there's good or
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a little crap no they touched yeah
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i am sweating up a storm in here
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this is so stressful see you're not putting the bottom one in one i am in no
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you're the bottom one is on the very bottom
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oh no i didn't yeah i didn't get that i thought they all had to go in one oh no
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yeah the bottom one that's why um let's try it again sorry
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about that okay well if your guys's goal was to
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make this look hard and like we should let professionals do it then mission
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accomplished i suppose sure whatever no problem can i have the
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pliers i'm weak
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and hold the bag at the same time because all of it has not the same question yeah i gotta switch hands i
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didn't think this through okay
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where did i put it
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okay if i just wanted to know for sure if i
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killed it could we try it i could tell you right now that we did oh i see the
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headstack is bent oh oh the tip of the head right here is bent which is creased
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upwards like this so they should go flat out this way
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right now just really flat this way you got it coming up like this here have a
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look at that pillow it's the bottom one it curls up a bit it goes up what that's
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gonna do okay put that into a good drive right now it's gonna scratch up the
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bottom of the bottom platter on size 0. so now when we
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started this video the intent was to just take a platter
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out of a working drive put it back in and demonstrate that it still worked
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what we're ending up with is that in order to fix this drive we need a donor
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drive because this is actually a very common failure i mean not an idiot opening your
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drive and bending your read head and right head or whatever but just just a
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platter crash failed actuator assembly thank you and i'm gonna try this again
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but like super more carefully this time and i know how the combs work all right
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i'm gonna try and be more organized about these this time so this is step
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one i wanna do it right this time
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i don't like failing at stuff so you've done i was told over 50 000 of
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these whatever the boss man says
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oh new trainees they got to do about 3 000 before they touch a customer product
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wow there you are okay now what we're going
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to do before you even do anything else yeah we want to label our donor drawing
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oh okay let's put a ds on there for drive savers
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where right on the magnet here please ds
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isn't that redundant if i put it here yeah but you know what it's very simple
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i'm sorry i don't want to give the customer back his wrong part right okay
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the wrong actuator energy while we're driving got it okay let me think hold on this guy right
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no no oh shoot hold on let me think oh no this guy correct okay
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man the pressure's on i feel like this is like you know the ninth inning of the big
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game or whatever like i i yeah now i i put on the comb right
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no oh crap okay hold on do i take these out first great ah
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my arch nemesis we meet again not quite yet mr oh damn it hold on
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and i gotta hold this right while i do it
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that one okay ah mr comb
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we meet again
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okay did i get it you're good you're bold ah
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oh my god
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okay now that down on the what
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on its side what does that mean just flat on the table somewhere
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oh okay
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okay you watched it what do you think are my odds uh
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i think you got a pretty good chance
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come on you get you don't don't don't cheat me here
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you gotta give it to me out of a hundred i'll give you about maybe a 65. 65.
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that's kind of high 65 is high 65 is quite generous
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oh well that's not that good okay what i do
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wrong specifically just a lot of wiggling yeah a lot of wiggling
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the cone when you're removing the part remove the actuator off the donor drive
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yeah that's basically it
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but like i said a lot of people you know before anybody touches a live drive and
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typically three thousand swap before they get to the customer's job right
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okay and that's this is one of the reasons why right
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oh man my hands are still shaking like crazy
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i would say i've never been more stressed to find out if a hard drive
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works but i definitely have
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anyone who's seen the wanick server video will know that
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it's there okay so it's detected but that doesn't tell us that much does it
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it tells us that's a good that's a great step okay oh enter's okay
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but would k work theoretically yes right
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i would sue so let's try it hey hey you learned something today too
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hell yeah man oh what do you guys think okay okay no cheating if you're gonna
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leave a comment on the video guessing whether i got it or not you
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have to do it now you can't do it after
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that's cheating wait we didn't clean the platters does that matter okay we're in the clean room
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oh the waiting wait hey hey
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is that good that's good green is good green is good so we are everything right
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now so it is telling me it's imaging a three terabyte drive
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that's your total block count right here we're right into a eight terabyte target
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yeah someone take nine hours roughly approximately now this is how it should
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work but we consider this a very good first step this is very this is
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excellent for the physical aspect of the drive so we saw we've seen no even pink
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so far no yellow and no yellow as of yet
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up as of yet wait did you see oh
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so there you have it guys we're only zero percent of the way through so you
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know it's hardly completely conclusive but we are tentatively calling the operation a
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success which is really exciting it's all green so far
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however i do need to be very clear that this was a best case scenario we had two
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working drives that had never been opened before so even though
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i personally broke the the heads on one of them we knew that
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the rest of it was good there was no firmware uh corruption there was no
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media damage there was no heat damage or
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whatever else these guys might deal with on a on a daily basis
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but i'm still really excited about it and i'm still
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really grateful that i got the opportunity to try this out
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so thanks for watching guys if you dislike this video then you frankly kind
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of suck but if you like this video hit that like button get subscribed maybe
13:52
consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured i don't know hard drives also love the link to drive
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savers down there because those guys were totally badasses for bringing us in
13:59
here also while you're down there you can check out our merge storage has cool
14:03
shirts like the one i'm totally not going to show you because it's totally covered in this suit and uh we've got a
14:07
link to our community forum which you should totally join