Hard drives fried?! 160gb dead!?!?

[om3ga]

Hi everyone!

Having a major problem with my hard drives tonight:

seems somthing may have shorted in my power supply, not long after noticing i smelt smoke coming from the computer, and immediately turned it off.

(btw both hard drives on same power cable coming from PSU, the wires that shorted were on another set of cable coming from PSU)

After turning it back on, My computer was unable to properly detect BOTH of my hard drives, which are as follows:

Western Digital WD400 40gb with NTFS partitions
Western Digital WD1200 120gb with NTFS partitions

the 40GB one has windows on it, therefore I boot from it...
the 120GB has gigabytes of storage on it, containing all sorts of artwork, created programs, images, music, projects, and general backup!

ARGH I NEED IT BACK!!!!!

Ok, I've tried the 120gb hard drive in another computer (running XP) set as a slave to its main hard drive.

I make its BIOS search for the hard drive, after a long time it recognizes it as the WD400 it is, but with some strange version number after it (dunno if it did that before, never noticed) and only recognized it as a 8.4gb drive!!

the 40gb also does this, even while still in my computer, its recognized as an 8.4gb drive

I am thinking of sending it to a data recovery service center to extract the platters and try in another hard drive to extract the data, but I guess this will cost thousands of dollars, for somthing that I could possibly do myself for the cost of a new hard drive!

Another alternative would to possibly buy a new 120gb Western digital WD1200, and swap the circuit boards on the back of them, since its possible that the circuits have been fried...

and if that doesnt work, maybe even swap the platters in the two drives, but from what I've heard, this is NOT advisable due to the sensitivity of dust and such.

I REALLLY need to get the data back!

Any comments, ideas, suggestions & help is obviously welcome

Thanks alot for reading, thanks more if you can help!!

[Chuckiechan]

First, I would try putting a new power supply in to replace the burned one. This will get you to where you were before the "incident" . The other bios may not be set up right, or too old to detect large HDDs..

BTW, use a new data cable...

Good luck!

BTW2, are you running one for a back up? I also have two, but disable one in the device manager. I don't know if it is protected or not, but it feels good!

BTW3, also, if it still won't boot, try setting it as non-bootable using partition magic or such and see if you can still see your data as "slave" as a logical partition.

Bummer!

[Peter M]

Well, if you don't have backup and the drives turn out to be dead, there's no choice but turn them in to a professional data recovery company. Prepare to pay $$$
Like I always keep preaching - one backup is no backup. Particularly not if it stays physically connected to the working dataset. Buy a tape drive and a set of about five media for a proper rotational scheme of REAL backup. It WILL happen again.

[om3ga]

Hi again, thx for replies

in reply to your ideas Chuck:

The other bios may not be set up right, or too old to detect large HDDs..

Funny enough, its a new computer lol, with an AMD XP 1800, etc etc. Dunno if i mentioned this above but it specifically said "HDD Primary slave fail(or error)", so i guess it didnt work!

use a new data cable

Also funny enough (if talking bout IDE cables) I just got a new set of UV reactive rounded IDE cables. lol

BTW3, also, if it still won't boot, try setting it as non-bootable using partition magic or such and see if you can still see your data as "slave" as a logical partition.

Not sure what you mean by that

And to PeterM, thanks for advice. lol.
If It does cost too much to get my data back, I'm going to have to try it myself!!

First I will attempt to swap the circuit boards, and prey that is the problem!!

If I get it back again, first thing I'll do is backup to DVDs

[Peter M]

Be aware that for swapping circuit boards, you not only need to match the exact drive series and capacity, but also the exact firmware revision.

Part of why these data recovery companies charge so much is that they stock every single revision of every single make, series and model of drive that has ever been made.

[dunbar]

Sometimes after some deep incidents, the BIOS of a system will be partially incorrect. As ChuckieChan said, do install a new power supply before trying to run that system again.

[om3ga]

Hi everyone again!

I got a new Thermaltake 420w purepower PSU, and I will install it soon

I'll be extremely happy/greatful if this works... first thing I'll do is backup EVERYTHING to DVD!

Wish me luck !!

[om3ga]

ARGH, nothing :'(

the computer has also destroyed another new 40GB hard drive, now I assume it is a problem with the motherboard's IDE controller.... time for warranty!

[Agent_Embryo]

We had a fried HD here last week, and it actually knocked out anything else on the IDE controllers. BIOS couldn't detect anything. Look on the controllerboard on the harddrive. You might be able to see if it's burnt or not.

[om3ga]

Hello again!

I have not checked the controllerboard (because controllerboard is facing down and cant see the circuit!) but I assume it has blown up because of the smoke i could smell after the PSU screwup!

Are you doing anything to repair it? I am looking to email the manafacturer and asking they can supply a controllerboard for each of the hard drives, then replace them myself, and I am hoping that this IS the problem, I dont want to fork out $1000 to fix it, especially since I dont have the money

:'(