I have a HDD 4tb Toshiba drive I had in a Raid 1 NAS device (NSA320) that failed in the raid and I replaced it and rebuilt the raid and life was good.
I have finally moved to a better custom TrueNas scale setup with 2x 8tb HDD in a Raid 1 with weekly encrypted backups to online cloud. I have 2 4tb Toshiba HDDs that match closely with the dead hdd.
I want to try to recover data from it mainly because I want the experience… Let me explain. The drive clicks, yes you can hear the disks spin up to speed and then you hear clicking as it’s trying to read.
I want to know if I can start off trying to swap the circuit board to rule that out without much issue? I have true HEPA filter air purifiers and I can rotate and angle them to have a positive pure air pressure if I need to open it up and swap out the arms.
Is it worth trying? Anything I should know or think about in my decision to try this?
Since you got your data off that drive, there is no way to make it worse. So sure, go ahead and open it up and learn something. But I think you’re underestimating the flimsiness of the mechanics inside. It’s like nanometers clearance between the read heads and the surface of the platters. You won’t get it right without expensive equipment. And changing the PCBs is probably not going to change anything if it’s a mechanical failure.