To Recover a Fried Hard Drive

If you accidentally fried your hard drive then don't despair my friend!

I did exactly that. I touched the exposed circuitry (thanks Seagate for not bolting on a cover!) against the chassis of my pc. I mounted the Seagate 80Gb ATA drive to the chassis but there was a metal tab touching a resistor on the control board. *Crackling sound* I hate the smell of friend circuitry!

Ok so I basically broke into a cold sweat when the drive kept setting off my power supply whenever it was plugged in. I had all my design work on it and some recent work I did for some clients that was worth thousands of dollars. How the puck was I to get my data back?

I called up a few hard drive data recovery places in Sydney. The average cost to get my data back was $2000. Two Thousand Dollars! Remember that amount, I'll continue further with this story.

I thought about this for a while and remembered that I had two other Seagate drives. One was a 40gb and another was an 80gb drive. The 80gb drive had a different control board and the 40gb had an identical control board to my fried 80gb drive. The only difference between the fried 80gig and the ok 40gig was the firmware version and a few slightly different chips, but they had the same serial numbers.

I couldn't see damage to the control board on my fried drive. But I unscrewed the control board and took a look underneath for discolorations. Nothing visible, but the chips on the control board must have been damaged. Regardless, I took the 80gig that worked and unbolted it from the drive block. I did the same on the fried hard drive. I swapped the boards around and tested the drive with the good block to see if the control board is really fried. It didn't fire up. So I tried the fried drive with the good control board and still nothing! I was beginning to sweat hard!

I took a look at the 40gig drive and thought "No way it will work. Different capacity". But I gave it a try and bolted on the 40gig control board to the 80gig drive block. Stuck it into my USB hard drive contraption and bing bang bong, it starts winding up! I quickly plugged in my USB cable to the drive and pow, windows vista sees it as an 80 gig drive (but lists it as a 40 gig)! I downloaded all my data across to my new SATA drive and had no trouble. The drive wasn't even slow. The only weird thing was the noise the drive was making. Meh!

Anyway, back to that $2000. If you have a set of $10 torx screwdrivers, an Ebay account (to find an identical drive to your fried one) or an identical drive to your fried one and half a brain, then you won't need to take out a mortgage to get your data back.

To tell you the truth, the data recovery business is a criminal organisation holding your damaged drive and your intelligence at ransom. It's not difficult at all! Hey I got my data using a seemingly incompatible control board!

(I do recommend you go out of your way to get the same control board as you may damage your hard drive contents if not. I attempted this particular drive modification strictly at my own risk. I do not take responsibility for your damaged hard drive(s))

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• recovery
• hard
• drive
• harddisc
• disc
• fried
• disk
• data
• recover
• lost
• computer
• SATA
• seagate

[darkmatrix80]

next time -- cut out the chat -- your not funny dickhead

[neoartifact]

@darkmatrix80 Next time, be more polite and maybe I might respect and enact your "creative" input. Cheers.

[antecedo]

Your maths is terrible... $10 - $2000 = $1990 not $1900 lol... unless those screwdrivers cost you $100... :) in which case, you have been ripped off sir!

[donderlanden]

Thanks a lot! You realy saved me with this video! I did the same on a WD2500 and I was able to recover all of my data.

[Mrbobodigital]

@darkmatrix80 lol.

[thesloc]

Dude, 2000 - 10 = 1990 lol

[TheChernandez2020]

whats the name of the song in 0:00

[KingMacintosh]

@antecedo The retard in this video mentioned how Seagate "cheaps out" by not covering the PCB board on the drives. NO manufacturer does, Seagate used to do it like a friggin' royalty feature, but no one else ever did.

[jeem680]

Who thinks that this dude talks to much give me a hell yeah!!!

[theagrafiotis]

$10-$2000=$1990!!!!!

YOU'RE NOT GOOD AT MATH LOL.

[patsf1]

@antecedo Your maths is terrible... $10 - $2000 = $1990 not $1900 lol???

You'll find that the correct equation is $2000-$10=$1990 not $-1990