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Hard Drive: Sparks, Beeps, Clicks
ED!
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Basically I was moving my SATA hard drive, and it hit a metal piece (on one of those silver contacts on the "motherboard" looking area), sparked, smelled burning and computer stopped reading it. It isn't the OS, so computer continued running fine. Shut down computer, and looked at hard drive. One of the silver contacts is blackenened. Everything else on the board is "fine". So, is it possible I could do the "motherboard" swap I've heard about? Is it just as simple as unscrewing one off a new drive and placing it on the old drive? And how would I be able to check and see if it is mechanical? Am I stuck simply opening up the hdd to look inside? I realize a professional should be doing this, but I don't have 500-2700 dollars (as quoted by DataSavers.com) just lying around. I'm willing to try it myself as the only thing "near and dear" on there is 200GB or so of photographs - although none of them are anything I couldnt recreate myself if I wanted to.
So just looking for some general help/direction here. Most hard drive error websites seem to be about mechanical failures/file failures. Not a whole lot seem to address my situation. So any help would be appreciated; thank you.
So just looking for some general help/direction here. Most hard drive error websites seem to be about mechanical failures/file failures. Not a whole lot seem to address my situation. So any help would be appreciated; thank you.
"Get the hell out of me" - [ex]girlfriend
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By 'one of the silver contacts' do you mean one of the jumper pins on the hard drive? Very likely fried something on the drive's board, may have scrambled the data on the disk (is that possible via electrical short?). Not knowing much about hard drives in general, I'd say that it may be possible to swap the circuit board of the drive, but it seems like that'd be soldered to connections with the drive and such.
Limed the above for great justice...
As long as you have another of the EXACT model of hard drive and swap the boards over VERY CAREFULLY to avoid any damaged cables or pins it may be possible to rescue your data. However, there is a fair chance that the short you caused fried or damaged more than just the circuit board.
In the future, don't mess with any sensitive electronics while they are powered up. Power down and unplug everything first and then mess around with whatever you need to touch.