3 Hard Drives Dead. Salvageable?

[liamthepirate]

Hi I had a 160gb Seagate as my systems C drive. Then i had all of my photographs and videos and all important stuff on a 250gb external seagate connected with usb.

Then i bought a 1TB hard drive and i stupidly connected it to the motherboard and the computer instantly turned off. It wouldnt turn on but eventualy i got it on. I tryed for a week to get the system to read any hard drive and the only one it would read was an old ide hard drive that wasnt connected. I brought the 160 and the 250 in to a pc shop and the guy said they were dead and he put a new psu in my computer and they wouldnt work and he tryed his own hard drive in it and it read it fine.

I cant accept that my data is gone. There was to be a way of getting it back. I feel the data is still there just it cant be acessed.

Can anyone help please or offer any advice?

 

[sadams04]

What you did COULD cause the drives to go bad (surge or short when plugging things in while powered on), and with the troubleshooting the guy in your pc shop did, the drives are probably shot.

You can try data recovery software, but temper your expectations. I have never been able to recover data this way.
http://free-backup.info/data-recovery-software.htm

 

[FreeDataRecovery]

Does the 250gb USB drive receive any power at all?

If not extract it from the enclosure and attach it directly to a PC via SATA and power conectors. Note this will void any warranty.

Does it spin up? Can you feel it vibrate slightly?

If not there is a component on your drive's PCB that's called a TVS diode. Removing the failed TVS diode may give you access allowing you save a copy of your data.

 

[liamthepirate]

Yes I can feel it spinning I was trying it through the usb ..but I think its getting power ..is that a good sign?

 

[FreeDataRecovery]

Okay thats good. Now does it appear in Disk Management?

 

[liamthepirate]

Where do I see this? I will have a check tomoro and report back

 

[FreeDataRecovery]

Go to the Start Menu, right-click on Computer, and select Manage.