recover Hard Drive Data

April 19, 2005 2:37 PM

Can someone suggest a cheap and reliable place to recover data off my hard drive? I crushed a pin(IDE) in the 40-pin area and it broke off from the circuit board. AND for some reason my drive doesn't even spin when its plugged into the power source. This was a fine drive, only a couple of months old, until this day when the pin got crushed.....any help will dooooo!

it is a hitachi 200 gb model and I talked to one place that quoted a $850 fee if it can't be fixed. The one thing that concerns me the most is that the drive doesn't spin anymore...for this could be serious...

posted by matthelm to computers & internet (4 comments total)

If you can buy the same *exact* hard drive used from someone, you should just be able to replace that PCB and the ports on the back from the 'donor' and the drive will work fine again.
posted by SpecialK at 2:59 PM on April 19, 2005

What SpecialK said - I've used this method before. Search ebay or pricewatch for the the exact model number of your hard drive, buy it, swap the PCBs and cross your fingers.
posted by Tenuki at 3:06 PM on April 19, 2005

One of my friends just had a 200gb Hitachi drive go out on him (bad PCB). According to my friend, when he called the Hitachi guys, they said they don't guarantee ANY sort of repair method involving the replacement of the PCB, something to do with different lot numbers having different versions of the firmware on them.

I don't know how to guarantee you'll get the closest lot number, but a fair attempt might be to buy it from the store/warehouse you got your original hard drive from, and ask them for one of the hard drives they received in that time period.

YMMV
posted by onalark at 3:34 PM on April 19, 2005

If you can find somebody local with a soldering iron you might be able to fix it. I wouldn't trust that kind of fix for any extended period of time, but you would at least be able to get the data off... For example, there is no reason you couldn't add your own wire soldered directly to the PCB where the broken pin connects to it.

Since the assumption is that the PCB is toast anyway you don't have anything to lose...
posted by Chuckles at 3:54 PM on April 19, 2005