How do i get data off of a broken hard drive?

[Sephroth57]

i accidently shorted out my harddrive on my computer i was fiddling with something in my case and my finger touched the circuit board kind of part on the bottom, and now my computer wont recognize i think i shorted it out.

where can i send/bring it to get data off of it? i called a computer place near me and they said i would have to take it to a place that specializes in HD recovery cause they cant do it there. i have a new HD to copy it over to, anyone know?

[Hoagie_one]

ive seen places on teh internet that specialize in this...but they charge a fortune for the job

[Sephroth57]

holy crap i just looked up how much it is for online places, theyre talking like 500+ $ ....  that really blows. I had a lot of digital pictures on there not backed up anywhere else.. i guess theyre lost now 

[ntjedi]

If you are really adventurous you could (hopefully inexpensive) find the same model hard drive of the one you fried and either replace the system board or actually open up the drive and pull the platters out and install them in the other drive. 

You just have to be super careful of dust, scratches and static.

Just an idea anyways...

On a side note, I just took the board off the bottom of a 20 gig Quantum drive that I had lying about and after 6 screws it just lifted right off.  It had two areas that had pressure contacts (not sure if thats a correct term or not).  So it would seem that if the board is the only thing wrong with it, then it wouldnt be that hard to replace.   

[abrannan]

Count yourself lucky that you only lost a drive.  I did the exact same thing, but it also fried my motherboard.  The power supply went about 6 months later.  Coincidence?

[Hoagie_one]

removing the platers is next to impossible without destroying the hard drive. 

[ntjedi]

removing the platers is next to impossible without destroying the hard drive. 

oh, come on, I saw it on CSI a couple of weeks ago!   

[Hoagie_one]

my bad....must be easy then.

 

[PacManFan]

You don't need to replace the platters, replace the control electronics instead. More than likely, the platters are fine, but you hosed the electronics with static, so just swap out the control circuitry.

Hope this helps. If it's an older drive, you can probably ebay for it by part number. What is it?

-PMF

[Sephroth57]

it is a maxtor 80GB, heres what it says on the label

Code: YAR41BW0

SN: Y2Q3WVGE

6YO8OPO422211

[Thenasty]

cheap way and might not fix it, buy an exact type of HD and swap the bottom circuit board and cross fingers.

[Sephroth57]

hmm , then i would have another fully working drive missing the bottom lol.

im lookin at the HD now, there are 5 screws with torx looking heads, holding on the board. so its doesnt look like it would be complicated. only thing is, what if more then the board is shorted out?

[crashwg]

My guess is that if it is more than just the control board that you're SOL unless your willing to spend the $500 to get the info off...  You're going to have to buy a new HD anyways right?  Why not just give it a go at tryin to replace the board and see what happens?

[Snarbald]

Not that I condone this, but you could swap the boards and then make use of the warranty on the donor drive.
On a side note, why don't the hard drive making places make it so you can swap zapped electronics without exposing the platters to air? Am I missing something or wouldn't it just take a very thin layer of aluminum or something?

[JoyMonkey]

removing the platers is next to impossible without destroying the hard drive. 

oh, come on, I saw it on CSI a couple of weeks ago!   

ROFLMAO!! 

[xar256]

Depending on just how bad the circuit board is damaged...Try a program called Getdataback.

[shmokes]

Before you tear that sucker apart or lay down $500 on that, try to hook it up as a secondary/slave drive in another computer.  If you're just looking at data corruption making the OS unbootable you'll still be able to access the drive just fine as long as you're not booting to it.   Does your BIOS even recognize the presence of a drive?

[Sephroth57]

well it was the slave drive, i used it for all my media storage. It doesnt click, or make any weird noises, i know on my other HD theres a green light that blinks when it boots up, i dunno if my other HD has a light but looking at the light on my other one its so small its barely noticeable. So if there is one its not turning on, i just think the HD isnt even powering up, but im sure the data on it will be fine. Windows/Bios doesnt even know its hooked up

[RetroJames]

I had a similar issue except my drive froze, just wouldn't turn.  I tried a bunch of things but eventually I was able to recover files from another drive (I had just backed up my data via cut and paste from one drive to the one that then failed).  I am keeping the drive as I know there is still data on it that I will want in future (baby pics) with the hope that HD recovery services drop in  price sometime in the future. 

[danny_galaga]

send it to the CIA. theyll get everythng off it 

[mrhowell]

Do you see the hard drive in CMOS? Is it formatted FAT or NTFS?

[Sephroth57]

i havent tried seeing if the bios recognizes it, i will try that when i get home

[krick]

If you are really adventurous you could (hopefully inexpensive) find the same model hard drive of the one you fried and ... replace the system board...

I did this for my neighbor earlier this year.  he had a 20GB Western Digital drive that had a fried chip on the board.  I managed to find the exact same drive on eBay.  It cost me $30 but my neighbor was glad to pay that to get his data back.

It took me about 5 minutes to swap the boards on the drives just 4 screws each.  Worked perfect.