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Smoke from hard drive: data lost forever?

S

SuperCell

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 24, 2005
Messages
314
I was accessing an old IDE drive with a power adapter and USB/IDE cable. Well, I tried to plug the 4-pin power connector in backwards. I know it's beveled and can technically only plug in one way, but the terminals must have made contact and it was too late. Smoke came from the drive with a strong burning smell, even when plugged in correctly.

Is the data lost forever?
 
Probably not. But it will take several hundred to a $1000US for a recovery team to recover your data.
 
Best bet is to swap the PCB with an identical drive. That drive is probably old enough to run without case for some time.

My calculations show you have a 54.2% chance of success. GL
 
Maybe all you need are a couple of new zener transient voltage protectors (TVS -- they short out when there's a power surge or the power cable is plugged in backwards) and fuses (they blow out when transient protectors short).

If your damage is limited to the electronics and you want somebody else to do the repair, it's probably cheaper to just pay about $50 to a place like OnePCBsolution.com for a replacement. They can also transplant the tiny firmware chip from your original circuit board to a working one, and that's usually necessary with drives bigger than roughly 100GB because their heads are custom tuned for current and can burn out if the wrong currents are used.
 
Thanks for the replies.

Nothing super critical on the drive. Mainly I would just access it to play some old FPS games that I've since lost the disks for.

I can find a refurbished drive for $14, so might buy one and attempt to swap the circuit board.
 
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Back in business after swapping the circuit board with a refurbished drive. Thanks okashira.

Spent $14 on the drive, it is 40GB.
 
JoeComp said:
If the magic smoke leaked out, of course it will no longer work! ;)
Click to expand...

well if he would have caught it and put it back in.......then all would have been fine

hindsight tho is a wonderful thing;)

:D

.
 
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