please help with dead drives

[somename]

I just posted a same question on hddguru, and I'm also posting the same question here since I'm just absolutely frazzled and could use any advice I can get. Below is the situation I'm in.

I'm not sure what exactly went wrong, but after replacing my PSU the backplanes on my hotswap case went up in smoke, and I just found out it took all 6 of my HDDs with it. I can't see any scorching marks or anything on the PCBs on the drives, but none of the 6 drive do not spin at all or make any sound. I really hope it's just PCBs and all the mechanical parts are okay. Could the actuators or the motors be damaged instead?

Any how, assuming it's the PCB, a couple of quick questions. I learned up on what I have to do for PCB swap, but I've never don't any surface mount soldering. I found donordrives.com while googling, and they apparently do NV-RAM swap for you for the price of PCBs. They're price seems reasonable enough, but does anyone hear have experience with them? Also, if I could have somebody local do the soldering for me, I could just do one drive at a time, put new PCB then clone then next drive. I only need to recover 4 of the drives since they drives were in RAID-z2 set. Should I worry about reliabilities of the drives though? Should I just fix of all 6? Any advice would be appreciated. Much thanks in advance.

I'm sorry if I'm not being completely coherent, but I'm having a monstrous bad day. I put my dog down this afternoon, then my file server goes poof, and while I'm googling frantically on my main PC, I get blue screened and can't boot into windows getting corrupted DLL errors. I'm so out of my wits that I'm just keep having it reboot and do auto repair hoping for some magic happens. I'm typing this on my AD controller, and I better turn it in for the night. If this thing dies on me too, I think I'll just give up on computers for a while. Thanks for any help guys.

 

[mwroobel]

First, I am really sorry about your dog, I had to put down my Yellow Lab 2 weeks ago and it was traumatic. Second, do you have any backup at all? Is this a home box or a business server? How much is the data worth to you? If it is business critical, as much as it will cost I would recommend calling Drivesavers and NOT to screw with it yourself. If not, how seriously damaged the drives are is really a crapshoot. It could have just damaged the PCB, or it could have fried the entire chain of electronics When you say none of the drives even spin up, you did try one out of the backplane and just connected to a known good power cable?.

 

[somename]

No, my backup got fries a couple weeks ago and haven't gotten around replacing yet.
I realize it could be any number of things, and I realize data recovery is expensive. From what I can gather, PCB is what got fried most likely, and I really hope that's the case since it'd be the cheapest fix.

I'm just trying to see if some people here have had similar experience, so I can have better idea of my options. Right now, only thing I can try is PCB swap. This donordrive.com place I've found can do PCB swap with NV-RAM transfer for $70 a pop, but I have no experience with them. I can do the swap myself, but I'm not sure doing one drive at a time is the best thing to do.

 

[mwroobel]

Donor Drives is a reputable company, if you/they think you need a nvram transfer you are better off sending them the entire drive to evaluate. If you do decide to go that route, even though it will take longer, send 1 drive at a time. First make sure they can even help, and this will help mitigate something wrong happening during shipping (Lost package etc) and completely screwing ANY chances of recovery. Once this is done, I am sure you will put in place a better backup workflow!

 

[somename]

Donor Drives is a reputable company, if you/they think you need a nvram transfer you are better off sending them the entire drive to evaluate. If you do decide to go that route, even though it will take longer, send 1 drive at a time. First make sure they can even help, and this will help mitigate something wrong happening during shipping (Lost package etc) and completely screwing ANY chances of recovery. Once this is done, I am sure you will put in place a better backup workflow!

I'm pretty sure I'll be sending drives off as I'm in no mood for any further risk taking. I'll give donor drives a call tomorrow. They seem to be the cheapest by far for PCB replacement. Just in case the drives need more than PCB replacements(heavy knock on wood), any recommendation for data recovery company? Hopefully I won't have to break the bank. These are a lot of drives that needs fixing.

You don't have to tell me about timely backup. I get lazy for 2 weeks and boom, first HDD failure in like 15 years. I swear I gotta have some serious accumulation of unspent luck somewhere.

 

[mwroobel]

Drivesavers. Just keep in mind that if you ARE thinking of professional driver recovery, just do that first and don't screw with board swaps. There is as much chance of making things (irreparably) worse than there is of success.

 

[somename]

Drivesavers. Just keep in mind that if you ARE thinking of professional driver recovery, just do that first and don't screw with board swaps. There is as much chance of making things (irreparably) worse than there is of success.

I'll give them a call too. Though they look like the type of outfit that I'd have to save up before hiring the. Do you think I shouldn't even bother with the likes of donordrive.com?

 

[mwroobel]

I'll give them a call too. Though they look like the type of outfit that I'd have to save up before hiring the. Do you think I shouldn't even bother with the likes of donordrive.com?

It all depends. You have no backup. If you are not prepared to shell out what will most likely be several thousand dollars for professional recovery (get a quote from Drivesavers first, regardless of your final decision but multi-drive-failure arrays are not a cheap fix) then Donordrives or some other board replacement will be your only other avenue.