Manual data recovery from a broken hard drive...:(

DJ...

DJ...

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I accidentally plugged in the wrong cable into my hard drive enclosure and sent laptop current into the thing, exterminating the board on the hard drive. Well I'm assuming this is what has happened, as there is no physical damage to be seen. Unfortunately this is my back-up drive as I recently formatted my laptop and lost all of the original data. Now I am stuffed.

Unfortunately I refuse to get it done here in Singapore, as the two quotes I received were for the equivalent of R15k and R20k respectively, just to recover the data. It is Seagate 3TB 3.5" drive which is practically brand new. What are my options now? Can I send it in to Seagate and hope they repair the board and that the plate is still fine? Is there a DIY (pray to a deity) method?

The data on this drive is incredibly important and I have absolutely no backups now of any of it. Most of the files that I need cannot be replicated as they are excel and word documents.

Any advice would be appreciated...
 
It is an enclosure?

It is possible that it is just the enclosure board that has been damaged.

If you are brave enough to buy and enclosure you could transfer the internal HDD to another enclosure. Then try turn it on.
 
I tested the HDD out of the separate enclosure that I bought for it. It didn't spin, which indicates to me that the board running the drive is gone...
 
I have heard that if you replace the board with the exact same board from a new HDD, it would work.
But proceed with caution. I would guess you need to buy the exact same HDD. As in exact same. Then replace the old HDD board with the new HDD board. I would research more if I was gonna try this.
 
McGuywer said:
I have heard that if you replace the board with the exact same board from a new HDD, it would work.
But proceed with caution. I would guess you need to buy the exact same HDD. As in exact same. Then replace the old HDD board with the new HDD board. I would research more if I was gonna try this.
Click to expand...

I did this about 5 years ago, and it works. Don't know if it still works, but might be worth a try.
 
DJ... said:
The data on this drive is incredibly important and I have absolutely no backups now of any of it. Most of the files that I need cannot be replicated as they are excel and word documents.

Any advice would be appreciated...
Click to expand...

Then spend the R15k and have the professionals deal with it. Otherwise if you were in SA I'd say speak to southbit for a more reasonable quote.
 
DJ... said:
I tested the HDD out of the separate enclosure that I bought for it. It didn't spin, which indicates to me that the board running the drive is gone...
Click to expand...

You tested it out of the enclosure? I.e. you didn't have it in a new enclosure or what?

You can't just test it outside the enclosure with no decent power on it. What type of drive is this? 2.5", 3.5"?

I suggest you buy an external adapter to connect the drive with that comes with it's own power source. It should allow you to attach IDE, SATA 2.5 and SATA 3.5. Shouldn't cost more than R200.

Test it with that and as soon as it is picked up transfer the data back to your laptop.
 
Fried boards are the easiest things to fix on drives. Much worse is when the mechanical components give out, as happened to me recently. Like people said if you get an identical drive you can try to swap the board yourself. But take it to a pro and get it diagnosed at least before anything else. That won't cost anything.
 
Data recovery is very expensive, the more data there is to recover the more time it will take and the more money the professionals will ask.

Some people are so carefull with their hard drives and whats on it that they will easily pay a huge amount of cash to get the data back.

For example, I have two 1TB externals that is full of series and movies, I dont have backups for those and if they break I will go mad and wont be able to live with all that data I just lost, so then I will also probably pay lots of money to get everything back.

/off-to-buy-backup-drives..... :o
 
McGuywer said:
I have heard that if you replace the board with the exact same board from a new HDD, it would work.
But proceed with caution. I would guess you need to buy the exact same HDD. As in exact same. Then replace the old HDD board with the new HDD board. I would research more if I was gonna try this.
Click to expand...

This was sometimes the case with older drives. New drives (anything made in the last few years) are very different and this will not work. There is adaptive info in the PCB which is unique to each drive, especially the Seagate you speak ok.

Have a look here: http://www.southbit.co.za/inside-a-hard-drive/

You are in one of 2 positions:

1) Only the PCB is damaged. Either the PCB needs to be repaired, or replaced. Often when you plug laptop power into a HDD enclosure it does substantial damage and a replacement is needed. Remember, you can't just stick on a new PCB. It needs to be adapted to the HDD.

2) The damage has gone through the PCB and into the HDA and fried the preamp. In this case you'll need a replacement PCB and a new HSA.

Both situations are recoverable by a decent data recovery company, situation 2 being a lot more tricky. Tricky, but doable.

Either way, the quotes you got of R10k - R15k are excessive.

There might be a 'DIY' solution if you're lucky. PM me if you want some more info on this.
 
I've done the exact same thing before... plugging the wrong power source into the external hard drive. Only happened once before - I learnt my lesson very quickly after that.

Anyway, there is actually a way to fix this (or rather, be able to get the data off), which is the method I used previously to rescue my data :) However, if you do this, you do it at your own risk...

See, there is a fail safe built into the circuit board of the hard drive itself. In some cases, such as mine, nothing happened to the external enclosure, but the hard drive board fried. Or didn't actually, thanks to the "fail safe". These come in the form of a 12V and a 5V TVS diode. So when you connect an incorrect power supply, hopefully one of these goes (usually the 12V diode), in an attempt to save the hd.

Read this -> http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/TVS_diode_FAQ.html

So what you might be looking to do is:
1. Remove the circuit board from the hard drive.
2. Look for a tvs diode near the power supply area. In the above link in point 2, there are a couple of identifiers which you can look for to identify the correct diode.
3. Being very careful, use clippers to remove the diode.
4. Reconnect the circuit board to the hard drive itself, plug it in (using the correct power cable) and see whether it is useable.
 
The removal of the TVS is the only possible DIY. The problem is that if 18V has been put through it, it's often enough to short the TVS and also damage the board beyond this. TVS can only soak up so much punishment.

Best the OP uploads a high-res photo of the PCB, component side up.
 
morkhans said:
Then spend the R15k and have the professionals deal with it. Otherwise if you were in SA I'd say speak to southbit for a more reasonable quote.
Click to expand...

I haven't ruled it out. I will have to if push comes to shove...

teraside said:
You tested it out of the enclosure? I.e. you didn't have it in a new enclosure or what?

You can't just test it outside the enclosure with no decent power on it. What type of drive is this? 2.5", 3.5"?

I suggest you buy an external adapter to connect the drive with that comes with it's own power source. It should allow you to attach IDE, SATA 2.5 and SATA 3.5. Shouldn't cost more than R200.

Test it with that and as soon as it is picked up transfer the data back to your laptop.
Click to expand...

I mean I went into a pc store and asked them to test it by plugging it directly into a pc with the sata cables. Didn't spin...

cerebus said:
Fried boards are the easiest things to fix on drives. Much worse is when the mechanical components give out, as happened to me recently. Like people said if you get an identical drive you can try to swap the board yourself. But take it to a pro and get it diagnosed at least before anything else. That won't cost anything.
Click to expand...

Looks like it might be more complicated than that based on South Bit's post. Will have to do some more digging into this...
 
South_Bit said:
The removal of the TVS is the only possible DIY. The problem is that if 18V has been put through it, it's often enough to short the TVS and also damage the board beyond this. TVS can only soak up so much punishment.

Best the OP uploads a high-res photo of the PCB, component side up.
Click to expand...

This is the drive in question:

2012-07-10%252015.30.37.jpg


2012-07-10%252015.31.23.jpg


2012-07-10%252015.30.58.jpg


Not sure how much help these are...
 
South_Bit said:
The removal of the TVS is the only possible DIY. The problem is that if 18V has been put through it, it's often enough to short the TVS and also damage the board beyond this. TVS can only soak up so much punishment.

Best the OP uploads a high-res photo of the PCB, component side up.
Click to expand...

Well, as I said before, exact same thing happened to me - had the laptop cable plugged into the HDD enclosure for quite a while (a good couple of minutes before I even booted the laptop on, realized that the laptop battery was flat, and then went looking for the laptop power cable). I simply removed the TVS and all was good... In fact, from what I remember, the TVS didn't even look damaged when I gave a quick look over the PCB. But I thought "what the hell", and removed it anyway - couldn't really have gotten worse (unless I removed the wrong piece). Only when I removed it I actually ssaw that it was slightly "burnt out". Anyway, removing the TVS just nulls any future overvoltage protection, and the HD will still work generally without it.

I'm just saying it may be worth a shot, if all else fails... Much worse can be done...
 
Dj... can you unscrew the PCB on the drive and then post a picture of the other side of it...

EDIT: once the screws come out be careful... there should be tiny wires that need to be unplugged as well... you don't want to be ripping them
 
Here are some other pics. Do I maybe need to unscrew it to look at the actual board, perhaps?

2012-07-10%252015.39.04.jpg

2012-07-10%252015.39.15.jpg

2012-07-10%252015.39.24.jpg
 
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