Resurecting the drive

[coldblackice]

Well, my notebook drive bit the dust. I suppose video encoding, watching a movie, with 96 tabs in firefox and 23 tabs in IE, on a hot summer's night on a black leather seat was too much heat to handle. Lappy froze, BSOD, reboot to "no device found". Removed drive and tried in another machine while holding it -- no vibration or sounds from poweron/spinup.

Does this mean that the failure is likely electrical (on the PCB board)? If it was something with the heads or platters, wouldn't I feel or hear some type of vibration? How can I be sure if it's the PCB board without taking it in to a professional?

I'm thinking that I can switch the PCB board with my brother's identical notebook drive to get my data off.

 

[sturm]

Try putting the drive in the freezer for a few hours. Take out, plug in and see if it works long enough to get your data off. Sounds weird but it has worked before for people.

 

[rozar]

I have also heard of the freezer trick but never tried it. You may also be able to buy an identical hard drive from the internet (maybe ebay) and remove the circuit board off it and put it on yours if you have valuable information on it. I have been able to do this a few times for customers.