Dead HD's! :'(

Karchiveur · Post by **Karchiveur** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 11:02 am

Alright,

heres the shin-dig,
I plugged in my molex cable backwards into a WD40gig. and i have everything on it,
What should i do? replace the circuitry on it? find another drive thats alike with bad clusters?
Got ALOT of stuff on it, my main HDD!

and my slave aswell isn't working now, it will power up (spin) but will not be detected @ start up, instead it just sits there and says Press F4 to skip...

ahhh! lol

any help or general disscussion about what to do is greatly appreciated!

Jordan

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 12:10 pm

OUCH. Man you have to work pretty hard to do that normally.

You tried reconnecting it the right way? Probably fried but it MIGHT have polarity protection in the electronics.

I doubt swapping the electronics would help - the actuator and motor are probably toast. You'd need to move the platters to another identical drive, and that has to be done in a clean room. VERY expensive (like $500+ from a data recovery shop).

You could try doing it yourself - you might be able to get your data off it before the platters before contamination crashes it BUT you'd be wasting the money on the second drive (assuming you found an identical one). The drive would be useless once it was contaminated by opening it. No guarantees either. If you do try it work in as clean dust-free environement as possible, and use latex gloves (with no talc) to handle the platters.

Personally I think it's a lost cause unless it's company data and they're willing to spend $500 - $1000 for a data recovery service.

Also, be aware, the power surge created by the short you caused may have damaged the power supply, the IDE controller, your other drive, or even other devices in the computer.

impuresoul2k3 · Post by **impuresoul2k3** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 3:20 pm

Doesn't a molex connector have a flat side on the bottom and angled corners on top? You'd have to try very very hard to do this :kookoo

Karchiveur · Post by **Karchiveur** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 3:39 pm

yeah well... its me, so, haha,

how it happened is that i had my hand behind the drive.. (out of vision)
and simply pushed it in.. brittle plastic snapped... and the rest was fried!

thx for all the info.. I'll experement with it all, and update when i get home... (i'm in school

)

Viperoni · Post by **Viperoni** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 12:07 am

Ouch that sucks

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 9:12 am

I've always been EXTREMELY paranoid about the possibility of doing this - especially on a client's system. I always make it a habit to visually check the orientation and not rely on the keying of the plug.

dadx2mj · Post by **dadx2mj** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 9:16 am

Jeez sometimes I have problems getting the molex plug to go in the right way. I cant imagine forcing one hard enough to go in the wrong way

Invisible Evil · Post by **Invisible Evil** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 10:34 am

This guy must have the strength of a Grizzly

Karchiveur · Post by **Karchiveur** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 3:36 pm

heh, the plastic sides were really weak.. possibly cracked...
I didn't put much forse in it, what i think hapened is that since i couldn't see i put one side in first (left 2 pins) and than wedged in the right side(2 right pins) and it must have push the sides outwards...

although I do like Invisible Evil's idea!

Viperoni · Post by **Viperoni** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 6:31 pm

Kar, I get the impression you're a very angry person