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Posted

Well it had to happen eventually...

 

At home I have had for a few years now a second drive that I've used solely for movies and music. Sometime last week, it died.

 

It appears that the drive is completely dead, as not even the BIOS sees it anymore.

 

I've tried all the obvious things I can think of - new SATA lead, different SATA port (even a new SATA card!), changed the power lead - with no results.

 

I've tried a linux boot disk, although unsurprisingly as it didn't show up in BIOS linux couldn't find it either.

 

I've even gone to the extreme level of leaving the whole drive in the freezer over night.

 

There is nothing on the drive which would be worth me sending it away to a data recovery company, but I'd still like to recover as much as possible myself if I can.

 

The only other thing I can think to try is a new logic board...

 

Does anybody have any suggestions or had any experience swapping a logic board?

Posted
There is nothing on the drive which would be worth me sending it away to a data recovery company, but I'd still like to recover as much as possible myself if I can.

 

The only other thing I can think to try is a new logic board...

 

Does anybody have any suggestions or had any experience swapping a logic board?

 

The trouble with replacing the logic board is it'll need to be an exact match.

 

I'd speak to a few data recovery companies, and see how much they charge if they can't get the data back.

  • Thanks 1
Posted
Even with an exact match you still can't really trust what coems off the drive as new drives compensate for manufacturing differences in the logic board, different drive, different anomolies and so you may still not get a clean read of all or any of the drive.
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Posted
What make HD is it? I replaced a board recently on a drive with a burnt out resistor, had to get it from Canada \ USA (can't remember which) but worked perfectly :)
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Posted

It's sounding like it's going to turn in to more hassle than it's worth...

 

Out of curiosity, would you all consider 4 years to be a good lifespan for a Western Digital HDD? I can't remember the exact model off the top of my head, but it's the first HDD I've had fail on me in years, and it was only a secondary drive so it never had as much use as the main drive (which is still going strong, but I'm considering replacing now anyway just in case!)

 

I think with the extremely low price of drives these days, it's about time I started a RAID array on my home machine...

Posted
What make HD is it? I replaced a board recently on a drive with a burnt out resistor, had to get it from Canada \ USA (can't remember which) but worked perfectly :)

 

It's Western Digital but I can't remember the model...

Posted
I'm suprised a WD lasted that long, the longest ours last is about 2 1/2 years. I was going to ask if it was a Seagate .11 drive as there were some issues with them Fixing a Seagate 7200.11 Hard Drive there are kits avalible that allow you to access the system board directly which may get around it. The kits cost around $500 though.
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Posted
I'm suprised a WD lasted that long, the longest ours last is about 2 1/2 years. I was going to ask if it was a Seagate .11 drive as there were some issues with them Fixing a Seagate 7200.11 Hard Drive there are kits avalible that allow you to access the system board directly which may get around it. The kits cost around $500 though.

 

$500 is a bit out of my price range! If it contained anything critical I'd be willing to spend some cash saving it, but it was just backups of my music and movies I'm not really willing to spend much, it'll just mean a day or two spent re-ripping CD's and DVD's :(

 

Maybe I'll avoid WD next time then, come to think of it I think the last (and only other) drive that failed on me was a WD.

 

Anybody used Samsung drives? Scan seem to practically give them away so I had considered grabbing a couple of 1TB and running them in a simple RAID to try and avoid this situation again...

Posted

@ Los0jos

 

I like Samsung F3 drives, i like them as they are quiet and quick. I've installed quite a few 1Tb drives as secondary drives for people and i've not had any complaints as yet.

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Posted

Ive been fixing lots of electronic stuff lately. (A 3 year old 42" plasma TV that I got for free has been my largest success).

 

Check the logic board for defects. If its a burnt resistor it can be fixed for not much with the right tools. (I had to replace some on the plasma that were smaller than a pin head).

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Posted
Ive been fixing lots of electronic stuff lately. (A 3 year old 42" plasma TV that I got for free has been my largest success).

 

Check the logic board for defects. If its a burnt resistor it can be fixed for not much with the right tools. (I had to replace some on the plasma that were smaller than a pin head).

 

Embarrassingly it hadn't even occurred to me to get the multimeter out! :doh:

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
It's Western Digital but I can't remember the model...

 

If you can find it and it is the PCB that's at fault somewhere like this might have a replacement...

 

HDD Parts

 

If it's a burnt resistor the sniff test will help as well as visual (burnt resistors usually smell rather fragrant when powered on!)

Posted
If you can find it and it is the PCB that's at fault somewhere like this might have a replacement...

 

HDD Parts

 

Cheers, have you ever used them? I'm immediately put off by the terrible grammar...

Posted
Have you thought about a SATA HDD Caddy? I found on my old HDD, BIOS would not see it but when I plugged it into a Caddy it worked long enough for me to get the data off.

 

I did try one but it didn't work. However, I was thoroughly unimpressed by that caddy, so I may try another one yet [i ranted about said caddy here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/82119-sumvision-ico-esata-plus-usb-2-0-version.html]

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