Data from knackered external hard disks

[Lamble]

I have two WD ext hard disks that have damaged power supplies. I've stripped the casing down and it's the power to the drives themselves (on the boards). I spoke to someone about extracting the data from the drives and a sum of £800 per drive was mentioned. Anyone able to help get this down to below £100? Or anyone have any ideas where I can get a couple of mother boards for the drives?

Ta.

 

[turbine_2]

Have a look on e-bay for the same drive (if they're both the same drive then that'll save you one) and use the motherboard off that.
It's worked in the past (for a friend) but I don't know if the modern drives have logic on board about the drive makeup that may prevent it now.
Worth a punt anyway.

 

[rce]

Normally they are just standard drives, either old IDE type or SATA.

Maplin sell a USB to IDE & SATA adaptor that should connect to the drive, and it will appear on your PC as an external drive.

EDIT If you can get the plastic/aluminium case apart you should see the drive and be able to unplug it from the case.

 

[bowser]

as per the previous advice.

Disassemble the boxes and take the drives out, then either connect them direct to the motherboard and copy data off if you want to do it cheap and you have sufficient ports free on the motherboard or as said Maplins/ebay/RS compnents/computer shop, etc etc.
and you have a number of options you can get a new hard drive enclousure about 20-30 quid should get one put the drive in and you have a new external drive, you may want to pay a bit more and get an enclosure with a fan if you want to leave it plugged in for everyday use. If you just want the information off then for anything between 10-50 depending on what you get there are kits of cable that provide power and data cables so that you can temporaliy plug into a usb port and get data off that way.
If you check the spec then the type of drives you take off then you may want to think of possibly a network addressed storage device, you then put your spare drives in and connect to the computer via network cable and use the drives that way has the advantage that if you have other computers, you can access the information accros a home network.

 

[Lamble]

I've got the drives out of their housings and attached power directly to the drives, that's when you can smell the burning, like a scalectrix hand controller.
It's that board where the power goes into the drive that I'll need to replace. I'll look at the ebay route and cannibalise a cheapy, or two.

 

[bowser]

I've got the drives out of their housings and attached power directly to the drives, that's when you can smell the burning, like a scalectrix hand controller.
It's that board where the power goes into the drive that I'll need to replace. I'll look at the ebay route and cannibalise a cheapy, or two.

I take it then its not the power supply, its the actual board on the disk drive itself.

Basicaly you have a 12v dc power supply goes into the board along with the data cable, most of the components you see on the outside are to do with the data tranfer, and control of the motor, motor itself that controls the disk is inside the box which is a vacum if that little motor has gone so has the data without expensive techniques to recover direct from the platter.
Even if its just burnt out components on the circuit board that you see on the outside its hard to see if you are getting a nasty burning smell that they are the only bits that are damaged.
I would try and find a second hand drive of "exactly" the same type and see if the bits work but I dont think your in for a happy ending, Sorry, i have tried simlar for the same reasons and failed misrably.

 

[Andy B]

Talk to redcastle of this parish. He's sorted out various knackered hard drives for me and his charges should be within your expectations! http://www.redcabin.net/