Now that you have a basic understanding of the physical attributes of the drive, we will move to the more logical functions controlled by the drive and the internals of initialization processes done by the drive at the power on cycle.

Finally having reached the heads themselves, we can cover the basic types of heads, followed by the content in read by the heads and the way data is actually stored. For this to happen we will need to learn about the contents of the System Area and its tables such as P-Lists, G-Lists, Zone Tables, and Password tables.

Now that you know how the data arrives at the heads as it passes though the preamp, you will look at the content that is encoded in that sector and what each sector actually contains.  You'll learn in-depth information about the servo data, the addresses on the drive and locations in respect to the head, sector, and cylinder boundaries.

As we discuss this content and introduce each type of error, I will break down the errors logically so they can be understood based on the data recovery equipment and software used.  This will help you understand the types of problems that can cause the "Click of Death" often heard in hard drives, and what exactly the parts are that failed. We will then discuss the possible steps though which one might repair the drives. These will include methods such as live board swaps and SA repairs. We will also cover the ability to repair sectors using reverse imaging.

You now have a better understanding of the sensitivity of the hard drive and how everything affects the heads and alignment, which will help you in your quest to rebuild three more drives.  We will format the drives, copy files to the drive for recovery, and then break the drives down to bare metal.  Following that we will reassemble and attempt to recover the data we wrote earlier.