T3C
Prominent Member
I have an oldish Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 with a lot of data on it that I need to access. It was inside an external enclosure that I had lost the power supply to. When connecting the external case to my universal psu that I checked and doubled checked was set at 12V with the best fitting pin set to centre positive, as was written on the case of the external drive btw, it still didn't power up.
So, I thought I'd just remove the hdd from the case and just attach direct to my main work pc and just copy the files over that way as I have done with so many other hdd's in the past. I connected it just as you would any hdd via a spare sata power connector from the pc's psu and to the mb via a normal sata data cable. Upon pressing the power button on the pc there was a brief crackle from the Seagate's pcb which prompted me to turn the pc off asap. This was followed by that tell tell burnt out electrical smell coming from the poor old drive. :-(
I didn't bother turning it on and trying again as I was pretty certain the damage had already been done and that I was going to be looking at other ways to get at the data on that drive. Removing the pcb and turning it over revealed a tiny transistor or capacitor had let go of this mortal coil and gone to dead electrics heaven....RIP.
A limited bit of knowledge and a bit of Googling suggests that there could be some mileage in looking for the same revision number pcb from the same make and model hdd. This might allow access to the drive and allow for copying the data to another drive. I think I'm right in understanding that not only is it a case of swapping exact pcb but also moving the rom chip from the dead board and soldering it/replacing the rom on the new or replacement board as well.
Do any forum members have any advice or experience in doing anything similar by any chance or am I better off taking the drive to a data recovery specialist?
Many thanks in advance
So, I thought I'd just remove the hdd from the case and just attach direct to my main work pc and just copy the files over that way as I have done with so many other hdd's in the past. I connected it just as you would any hdd via a spare sata power connector from the pc's psu and to the mb via a normal sata data cable. Upon pressing the power button on the pc there was a brief crackle from the Seagate's pcb which prompted me to turn the pc off asap. This was followed by that tell tell burnt out electrical smell coming from the poor old drive. :-(
I didn't bother turning it on and trying again as I was pretty certain the damage had already been done and that I was going to be looking at other ways to get at the data on that drive. Removing the pcb and turning it over revealed a tiny transistor or capacitor had let go of this mortal coil and gone to dead electrics heaven....RIP.
A limited bit of knowledge and a bit of Googling suggests that there could be some mileage in looking for the same revision number pcb from the same make and model hdd. This might allow access to the drive and allow for copying the data to another drive. I think I'm right in understanding that not only is it a case of swapping exact pcb but also moving the rom chip from the dead board and soldering it/replacing the rom on the new or replacement board as well.
Do any forum members have any advice or experience in doing anything similar by any chance or am I better off taking the drive to a data recovery specialist?
Many thanks in advance