Hard drive fails to spin up

[cbs604]

I have a HD that seems to have a short on the controller board. With it plugged in, the PSU will not power up, and there is the characteristic expensive brown smell around the board.

This would normally be a bin job, but the owner is pretty anxious to recover some stuff, if at all possible. I know there are labs that can do it, but they have some horrific prices.

Would it be possible to replace the controller with one from another identical drive? Is there a risk of corrupting the data?

Cheers,
Brodie

 

[vacunita]

If you find a drive that is indentical. same size, same model same part number (not serial number but part number), then a controller board replacement is possible.

Just unscrew all the tiny screws that hold the board in place, and remove it. replace with functional board, screw back in place and plug back in.

However it does not guarantee that the data will still be there after the replacement. Or that there is no file system corruption, in which case you will need a data recovery program. Which you can google for.

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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[funkytunaa]

I believe it's possible to replace the board on some hard drives? If it does work. TIP:"Get the data off REALLY quick"

I think you have to sum up what the data is worth, is he willing to spend X amount (Could be Thousands....And they don't guarantee what they retrieve or the quality) on someone that specialises in recovery if not he will just have to live with it if you can't get it back. Unless of course, you caused the drive to burn out in the first place where as, you may be in a spot of bother.

But personally, I'd give it a go. What have you got to loose? The drive is stuffed at the moment anyway. Worst Case you don't get the data back and you stuff another drive in the process.


Cheers!!

 

[cbs604]

I just tried it using another board, not quite identical, (one is a 10Gb and the other is a 5Gb, both same family Seagates), but it smoked up as well.

All I wanted to do is see if the drive spins up, proving it is mechanically OK, then I could put extra effort into finding an exact copy.

So it looks like the motor is shorted, which means big $$ to recover.

Guess I will have to give him a call with the bad news. (And, no, I didn't do it, it came to me already bad - phew!!)

Cheers,
Brodie

 

[funkytunaa]

Pull the drive apart change the platters into another drive and see if you can get ANY data from it that way, wont last for long with all the dust etc scratching the platters.

This probably wont work, but it would be a bit of fun giving it a bash. Especially if you have nothing to loose.