A donor drive is a working hard drive of the same make and model that our technicians use as a source of spare parts. When a failed drive has bad read/write heads, a damaged circuit board (PCB) or a seized motor, the faulty part is replaced with the matching part from the donor so the data can be read from the original platters.
The parts have to match exactly. Two drives sold under the same model number can contain different heads, firmware and adaptive data, so a head stack, PCB or platter transplant only works when details such as the model, firmware, site code, head map and manufacture date are compatible. A poor match can fail to read anything, or damage the platters your data is stored on.
Please don’t try this at home
A head or platter transplant outside a clean room can destroy the data for good: a single speck of dust or a misaligned head can scratch the platters beyond recovery. Use this checker for information only, and talk to one of our engineers before anyone opens the drive.