Three Dead Hard Drives

This is an archive of the mabination.com forums which were active from 2010 to 2018. You can not register, post or otherwise interact with the site other than browsing the content for historical purposes. The content is provided as-is, from the moment of the last backup taken of the database in 2019. Image and video embeds are disabled on purpose and represented textually since most of those links are dead.

To view other archive projects go to https://archives.mabination.com

rzetlin wrote on 2010-08-10 19:30

I have this dilemma â€“ I have the bad luck of having three dead Western Digital hard drives.

My desktop computer Antec 400 W SmartPower Power Supply Unit (PSU) had a power surge and it fried 3 my hard drives.

I was able to replace my PSU and my PC boots up, but there are no signs of life from my hard drives - no spin up at all.

I even tried my hard drives on another PC and still no change.

It looks like the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) on the hard drives got fried.

I am going to attempt to swap out the PCB from a working hard drive with the same capacity and pray that works.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If that doesn't work I am left with two options:

1) Start from ground zero â€“ write off my contents as a lost cause and collect my material again

2) Take it in repairs at hard drive recovery professionals

For option 2, I already phoned several hard drive recovery companies and I am looking about $500 to $800 per hard drive.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The monkey in the wrench is I have accumulated about 4 years worth material.

- Everything from anime, music, manga and games
- Everything from kawaii to ecchi
- Everything from My Neighbor Totoro, Strike Witches, Ikkitousen to Shoujo Sect

With data recovery, every material is inspected by the technician to see if it is recoverable, including more racy materials like Strike Witches and Shoujo Sect.

I donâ€™t want to be put in a situation where I have to explain why Strike Witches or Shoujo Sect isnâ€™t illegal by an overzealous technician or worst yet, the authorities.

So what should I do?
1) Write the hard drives as a lost
Or
2) Take the risk and take it for repair
hengsheng120 wrote on 2010-08-10 19:39

do you use a surge protector?
rzetlin wrote on 2010-08-10 20:14

Quote from hengsheng120;120151:
do you use a surge protector?

Yes, and the surge protector doesn't work if the power supply happens to be faulty as well.
Halfslashed wrote on 2010-08-10 21:32

So all you really care about is several hundred gigs of anime?

Not worth the money man..

You could easily spend a good week and re-download all of that anime, rather than spending over 500$ to repair a hard drive. Seriously, there are fast 1TB drives for $60 now.
Osayidan wrote on 2010-08-10 22:35

Try with an external drive enclosure of SATA (or IDE if they're that old) to USB. I'm amazed at how many "dead" drives work in those, at least long enough to recover data.

Even if it doesn't work those are a good investment for building external drives for cheap.
rzetlin wrote on 2010-08-12 00:51

The situation keeps getting better...

It looks like the surge also fired my DVD drive as well.

I was able to plug my DVD into an external bay on another PC.

Oddly enough the DVD drive shows up in the BIOS and under Windows.

But I cannot eject the DVD tray and the DVD drive cannot read any CDs at all.

Any repair tips or should I get another DVD drive?
Halfslashed wrote on 2010-08-12 21:28

Get a new PC, because your whole computer is blowing up all over the place.
Taycat wrote on 2010-08-12 22:14

Slash, that's not helping at all. Either help or don't help.

Anyway, I would say trash the DVD drive and get a new one, used or new your choice, and place it in. It could just be the connectors and whatnot that's wrong. Test it on another computer or test the new one on it. If it's the connectors, you're screwed on that part.
Halfslashed wrote on 2010-08-15 03:11

Quote from Xiyamae;122744:
Slash, that's not helping at all. Either help or don't help.

Anyway, I would say trash the DVD drive and get a new one, used or new your choice, and place it in. It could just be the connectors and whatnot that's wrong. Test it on another computer or test the new one on it. If it's the connectors, you're screwed on that part.

Actually, since the power supply shorted out, it shortened the lifetime of most of the hardware in his computer, and killed the rest. It IS advice, because I don't want him spending tons of money repairing a computer when he can get a new one that's a lot cheaper, and probably a lot faster.
rzetlin wrote on 2010-08-19 16:39

I got around swapping out the hard drive PCB with the same model.

Good news: The damaged hard drive powers up. :thumb:

Bad news: The computer doesn't detect the hard drive. :fail:

I can hear the hard drive head continuously seek.

It's either:

1) Mismatched PCB firmware causing the hard drive not to read properly.

2) There is more internal damage on hard drive than I realize.

Looks like I have to write off the hard drives.

It would be nice to take it in for repair, but there's no control over your files once you let strangers look at it.
hengsheng120 wrote on 2010-08-19 17:32

you should try to freeze the hard drives as a last resort to get back the data
Eternal wrote on 2010-08-21 03:48

Note that putting drives in the freezer is a last resort, and probably won't last long enough to transfer gigs of data (Probably a few mins max). The frost/ice from freezing it will melt and water on the platters = gg.