Hard drive data recovery

danger_mouse_tm

HI there,

My brother sent me over his external hard drive from America that won't power up. I took it out of the caddy and its a seagate barracuda 1TB SATA. When i put it into my computer my pc won't power on. When I connect it to the PC, after I've powered up the computer, the computer shuts down immediately. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated as there are sentimental photographs on this drive.

Thanks guys

karasu

I would say, that only reasonable option would be to look for same model harddrive on ebay (down to board revision and firmware version) and switching electronics in hope it will work with new electronics.

Good luck

bonzodog2

Agreed, though how many 1TB drives will you find 2nd hand? **

A series of yuotube vids i watched on disk recovery by someone who knows what they're at (linky)suggests making sure the donor drive for the board is within 2 months of the manufacture date of the recipient drive. Modern drives apparently have firmware on the disk platters, for the processor on the board, so they have to match

[edit]just had a look, most are external, most are expensive.here is one of the cheapest, but thats 77stg incl p&p from HongKong; this one is just a bare drive, and the label can be seen, so you could ask for specific details. I doubt if someone selling al external drive will take it apart to get FW/model#/dates etc

Right now, there are 18 link drives that are not external, at 47 to 93 euro, not incl post

danger_mouse_tm

agreed i might try buying a brand new one and sde if i can swap the guts out

patrickk

ontrack will cost you 1600 euro ,1 terabyte drive 100 euro max .Ive tried this before youre wasting your time swopping boards has to be exact board and chances of getting that are slim to none

danger_mouse_tm

agreed i might try buying a brand new one and sde if i can swap the guts out

danger_mouse_tm

do you think ontrack could do it? I would want to be sure before parting with that kind of money. Plus there is very personsl onformstion stored on the drive

bonzodog2

patrickk wrote: »

ontrack will cost you 1600 euro ,1 terabyte drive 100 euro max .Ive tried this before youre wasting your time swopping boards has to be exact board and chances of getting that are slim to none

Well I can't comment for sure on 1TB Barracudas, but I've done it recently with a Maxtor 20GB. Tried other boards on it before, got one recently with a very close date, and away she goes. The original board was deliberately physically damaged [chips and connector mashed up by big screwdriver etc] by someone presumably try to protect data. I didnt find anything interesting !

PapaQuebec

I have a Seagate Barracuda ST370640AS 750Gb HDD that was dropped. Its possible that the electronics might be capable of allowing your drive to run sufficiently to recover data. PM me if interested!

danger_mouse_tm

i might just give that a go. I am going to give my bother a call first to let him know i am pulling the drive apart and there is no going back. I am working from now until 8 this evening. i will pm you later when i get home.

bonzodog2

You will probably need a small TORX screwdriver to change the board, you can get them in Maplin if there's one in Cork. I'd doubt a 750GB board would work a 1TB drive though, but it won't hurt to try, if its for free.

Good luck !