Smoking SATA EHDD - Any way to reclaim data?

[Jarik :: Tentsu]

Okay, long story...I've got two external hard drives. Ones is my parents (gulp) 500GB Lacie external hard drive. The other one is my own Seagate 320GB SATAII HDD inside a CoolerMaster X-Craft Enclosure.

Now both of power cords with the same connector at the end (with 1*12V, 1*5V, and two grounds). Now in my stupidity, I thought that due to having the same connector, they'd be the same standard...only to find later that the 12V and 5V are SWAPPED. Now I connected the wrong cables to the wrong HDDs, frying them both.

Now since the Lacie is closed and I don't want to void warranty I haven't opened it yet, but I had a chance to look at the Seagate working with the proper cables. When I add the power, it works fine - Hard Drive starts spinning and all. As soon as I connect the SATA cable to the hard drive, one of the chips right next to the SATA port (on the hard drive) starts smoking. A lot.

I've tried different hard drives on this enclosure and they work fine, and I've tried my HDD on different enclosures (messing up one of my friends enclosures in the process).


Now is there any easy way of recovering data? I called Seagate and they suggested I buy another Seagate HDD and replace the circuitry - is this an easy process? What is the risk? Does it require the same size HDD, or can it be another HDD of the 7200.10 line?

Thanks a lot in advance...it'd be great if I could get back that data...

Is getting a data recovery company to help very expensive?

~Jarik

 

[eyeCpc]

If you have anything important and unreplacable on the drive your best option would be to take the effected drive along with an equal or larger drive along with you to a professional data recovery service.

Once you expose a factory sealed drive by opening up the casing without being in controlled circumstances you will ruin the drive. No dust or moisture period! The only openings seen with drives is small holes for air pressure equalization while the internal parts are completely sealed from exposure with a special internal wrapping.

 

[3tpro]

I agree - Take it to a pro - We have had data recovered from drives we thought were gone..

________________________
Dallas Computer Support

 

[eyeCpc]

I certainly can't see scraping a new drive to only see partitial recovery when that could be used to replace the now toast drive. The pros will go in and recover anything still to find and hand you a data disk set or another drive you provide with all that on it.

For a drive in far better shape and simply unable to access one or more partitions you could use a live for cd Linux distro like Knoppix or ubuntu for copying files from it. Those are drives where Active Undelete or some other program would normally help as an option. too far gone? The pros are always going to be best equipped.

 

[LA1]

You probably could buy an exact new drive, take the controller card off of it and put it on the smoked one. We use to do that all the time in a shop I worked at. It would have to be the exact model drive. If you use data recovery it will cost probably close to a $1000. After you get the data off you probably could put the card back on the new drive again. Try newegg.com, they have good prices on HDs.

 

[eyeCpc]

You can also ruin a drive fast if you have never taken on apart very easily. This also mean desoldering, resoldering, desoldering again, and finaly resoldering one card back into the original drive casing. Something like that is for those experienced at soldering being assembly workers and have a delicate touch for the contact point type soldering needed.

While a professional service will run high for that type of service at times they operate under controlled circumstances since that is their profession. For any sensitive personal data like family photos you can't replace you risk losing things by trying splice two drives together and still not seeing working results.

 

[Jarik :: Tentsu]

Thanks for the advice everyone!

$1000 is probably way beyond my budget...I don't even *have* that much money...I was hoping for something more like $50-$150 (Thought it'd be an easier proceadure since the platters are probably still intact and it's just the controller that's broken?).

You probably could buy an exact new drive, take the controller card off of it and put it on the smoked one. We use to do that all the time in a shop I worked at. It would have to be the exact model drive. If you use data recovery it will cost probably close to a $1000. After you get the data off you probably could put the card back on the new drive again. Try newegg.com, they have good prices on HDs.

Reckon you could give me a crash course in doing that? =P

How many things need to be soldered on and are there things I need to be aware of?

I'll get a quote on data recovery, but if it's still beyond my budget, I may just have to risk doing it myself on the off chance it DOES end up working. =S

The data isn't *that* important...it's mainly a video I edited - a project which took around 400-500 hours. I have the final mastered DVD copy, but we had to lower the bitrates of some of the videos to 2mbps-4mbps to fit it on the disk, so I was keeping higher quality H264 versions...I'd be willing to pay a bit for it, but not a grand...Hmm...

Thanks again,
~Jarik

 

[Black Falcon 921]

Your best bet is to just buy a new hd and deal with your loss although hard as it can be its for the best. Getting data recoverd from pros is top dollar if you have a backup of your vids then you might just be better of cutting your loses. All that soldering that is being talked about is not for the faint of heart. Have you thought about what your going to do with your parents hd?

 

[Jarik :: Tentsu]

Have you thought about what your going to do with your parents hd?

Managed to muster the confidence to talk to them about it...Mum reckons I 'rush' things too much, then told me I should never take my box with me anywhere (she's always thought LAN parties are stupid =P).

Anyways, we went to the shop and they said they'd get a technician to look at it and if it's broken, we'll get a replacement. Which is good...though I had another video I was editing - and actually getting paid for on...But what I had on there was a quick mash-up they needed - I was planning to redo it from scratch for the DVD version anyway, so I'm not too fussed (just hope someone still has the original tapes so I can recapture - otherwise I *am* in trouble >_>).

*sigh*

I guess I may have to just suck it up...Kinda sucks...I lost a lot of work on there...I wanted to upload really high quality versions of the videos onto Stage6.com and all too. All the raw footage too...though I still have 25 tapes of most of it still...all that anime too - I'll have to waste bandwidth redownloading it again. Not even sure about some of the stuff I was keeping temporarily there...='(

Anyways, enough rambling. Thanks for your assistance everyone! Shame it can't be helped...Was my fault I guess (though why two of the exact same connectors have swapped the voltages around beats me...).

Anyways, once again, thanks,
~Jarik

 

[eyeCpc]

If you were taking the case along with you to Lan parties or whatever you or someone else may have let the drive see a little too much bumping around. Drives don't like any dropping on floors or other types of bangs and bumps.

Here I always run a second drive where I will keep a copy of any video file from a camcorder or other project I'm working "just in case of" the unforeseen drive crash or other problem where you could lose a file. With a pair of 500gb satas in use I'm contemplating adding in one or two more of the WD Green Power 1tb drives when the prices come down. Those would be strictly for storage and backup especially since videos will chew up hard drive real fast!