I've just fried my life-harddrive!!

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Very worried... I have my whole computer life backed up onto a newish hard drive, commercial projects, archived family home videos etc... today after 8 months of no use, i connected up the hard drive (externally) - which did involve putting the 4 serial ATA wire colours manuall into the power connector sockets... I turned it on, and nothing happened. THen after a few seconds a high pitched faint squeeling starts coming out and a trace of smoke. I heard no movement of the motor start up. ...Hopefully only the PCB has fried?

I don't know how it managed to fry. Never happened to me before. I connected the two power connectors carefully looking at this diagram:

http://www.bargaincell.com/images/products_large/cab/cabsat023.jpg

and wrote down the following colour connections:

4 = yellow 1 = red 2 = redBlack 3 = yellowBlack

2 and 3 meant the black nearest the red or yellow.

I've done this type of connection before many times over the years without a problem.

I looked up on YouTube quickly and found a guy saying that the PCB of an equal model hard drive can be swapped over with the fried one to sort it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUnmcbfagLA

I hope so!!!

Suggestions? Many thanks.
 
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Take it to someone who know's what they are doing.

Yes, if it's just the board, you could try and source a replacement, but good luck with that. Some "identical" models will use different revision boards which may cause issues.

Why did you connect it "manually"? Why not buy the £1 adaptor in the first place?
 
Thanks for your reply. Like I say, I've been connecting external drives for years without a problem. I didn't expect this one to go up in smoke!

I was connecting it manually as the plastic connector broke some time ago.

Does that sound like th PCB was frying or the hard drive motor was frying? I'm sure the smoke was coming up from the disc area... :((

Where can I get a connector from on a Sunday afternoon? I'm not going to be able to relax over this for a while.


Thanks
 
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Actually I'm thinking it may be best NOT to try the hard drive again.

I've come across this company: Datatrack Labs who do hard drive recovery. I figured since it is likely a mechanical failure (or at least, it is now!) then may as well not provoke the situation further.

I think the motor had seized and was refusing to budget. So it got stressed and started burning itself out. I can't believe I would have got the cables the wrong way around.

In their info they say they have a 95% success rate with:

Electrical failure – the hard drive refuses to spin. Sometimes a burning odour is produced by the hard drive and viable burns may be located on the PCB.

Mechanical failure - the hard drive is not functioning. The most common causes of a mechanical failure include read/write head crashes and spindle motor seizure.

They quote £ prices for these faults:

Logical Fault

Fixed Price
File System Corruption

79 - 145
Accidental Format/File Deletion

79 - 145
Unreadable Sectors (Bad Sectors)

79 - 145
Logical Data Extraction

79 - 145
Physical/Mechanical Defect

Fixed Price
PCB/Electrical Failure

145
Read/Write Head Transplant

195
Spindle Motor Repair

215
Firmware Malfunction

195
Platter Transplant

195



I hope they could just do a platter transplant for £195 to a new hdd.
 
I once bit the bullet and paid a company to recover a shagged laptop HDD - wouldn't spin up, lots of clicking noises, freezer didn't help.

They weren't cheap but they did recover an awful lot.


Very worried... I have my whole computer life backed up onto a newish hard drive, commercial projects, archived family home videos etc.
Well - if you'd done it right you wouldn't be worried.

The reason you're worried is that that drive doesn't contain a backup, it contains an archive. If it was a backup then all you'd need to do would be to get a new drive and take another backup.

If you archive to a single device then you are no better off than if you never archive or backup at all.

I wish you luck recovering your lost data, and when you have, next time you archive (or backup), do it to more than one device. A few USB HDDs (you could even do off site copies by keeping one at a friend's house) are way cheaper than paying a recovery company to get your stuff back.
 
pretzelz

It would be nice for other people to know what they were able to do
 
you're right. I will let everyone know how they get on once I send it off. Unfortunately due to the recent bad weather in England, I now have a leaking roof to fix which takes precedent. (money wise)

Fingers crossed for when I do send it off, which should be in a few months.
 
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