Shoutbox

get professionals to do it for you? :/

quote:

---

would it literally have to be an identical drive for me to be able to do that myself?

---

The simple answer is yes, it does.  Some substitutions between same series drives of different capacities may work, but if you are going to buy a drive to try this, look for an identical one.

quote:

---

the data is mostly priceless and irrecoverable

---

I think you will change your mind about that when you get your professional recovery quote.  It won't surprise me if it's a 4-digit figure.

Not to make you feel worse, but rather to point out a valuable lesson for anyone reading this thread -- if the data was even remotely valuable, let alone "priceless", WHY is it that you don't have a backup?  WHY is it that you didn't at least have RAID redundancy?  Hard drives fail even without someone plugging in the wrong power supply.

I work in IT and see this all the time -- home users' data is always "priceless" after their drive dies (but usually only until they find out how much it will cost to recover).  Before that happens, it's not just less than priceless, but not worth a hundred bucks for a second drive in a RAID-1, nor any of the owner's time to be proactive about it and back it up. 

"Data is useless, information is priceless"

Last time my harddrive crashed and I thought about getting the data recovered they where going to charge 1 euro for every MB.
So in your case that would be 40000 euro equals to about 60000 dollar.
So unless they can recover it easely or proffesional recovery got alot cheaper, I really think your data isn't that priceless...

do you know anybody with a 320gb WD internal drive with that model number that you could borrow the drive of? all you would need to do is swap the board off -- that's most likely what the problem is. after, you could swap it back and give them back their drive.

quote:

---

Originally posted by ShawnZ
do you know anybody with a 320gb WD internal drive with that model number that you could borrow the drive of? all you would need to do is swap the board off -- that's most likely what the problem is. after, you could swap it back and give them back their drive.

---

no, prtty much everyone i know has laptops

i'm trying to find either a drive or a circuit board online to buy as i think that'd be easier than trying to borrow one

if i did get professional help it wouldn't be some large company, it'd be one of a couple of independent professionals that i know of....who wouldn't be charging 4-6 figure sums (or whatever other ridiculous things have been suggested)

as for telling me to have backed it up.....i've already come to that conclusion by myself.  it doesn't really help to give me advice about what i should/could have done because that's kinda irrelevant now.  what helps the most is suggesting ways i can sort it out, like helping me find the same hard-drive/circuit board

Rep points for EVERYONE who properly helps me out on this (as long as it ends in the safe recovery of my data!)


EDIT:

Okay, i've found this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-320Gb-Dri...=1205663855&sr=1-1

now......my hard drive is WD3200JB-00KFA0 and this one is WD3200JB-RTL

would that be compatible......or would i have to contact the seller to see if they can tell me the circuit board number to see if it's the same?

i've also found this one

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0008EN7...m/coffeeuk13117-21

am i even getting close?

quote:

---

am i even getting close?

---

I think you are.  However, while looking that up, I came across this thread in another forum, which you might want to read. 

Basically, the posters there are suggesting that for this particular drive it is necessary to install the old ROM on the new board for guaranteed success.  That involves some fine soldering work and if you have never done anything of the sort before, that won't end well.  According to that thread, you have to get very lucky for the drive to work with another board without the ROM swap.

I can neither confirm nor deny that --  I have done a few board swaps successfully, but all on much older drives than yours.  The reasoning for the need to preserve the ROM sounds plausible.

I don't think you can hurt anything by buying one as close to identical as you can find and trying the board swap without touching the ROM -- in the worst case it won't work, you will put the board back on the new drive, still not have your data, but you'd need a replacement drive anyway.  I will, however, caution you to not even think about soldering SMT components of this size unless you have experience and appropriate soldering station, and know you can do it.  I have soldering experience and still wouldn't want to do that with the tools I have.

If you have more questions about this, you might want to try that forum -- it seems like they deal with this subject on daily basis.

yeah, i had found that thread...... and a similar one by the same person.....i've actually e-mailed a guy who [at that time] offered that board to see if he can still supply it to me.

i wouldn't try mucking around with soldering stuff myself.  if the board didn't work or a board from a similar hard drive didn't work i'd ask a professional mate of mine if he knows anything else i can do (or that he could do)....if not then i'm pretty stuffed

if i couldn't recover the data i wouldn't bother replacing the drive......i'm not gonna be able to rebuild what was on it, so i wouldn't bother getting another external hard-drive....if i did repair it (by whatever means) i'd buy a newer external hard-drive to put all the data onto

I stumbled upon this just now.

my hard drive is now fixed

after acquiring exactly the same model from ebay and getting a chip swapped over from the old (fried) circuit board onto the new one.....it works perfectly

all my data is still there and everything

so it goes to show, just don't give up......cos £60 and 2 months later, I've recovered everything!