www.deadharddrive.com

sevexpei · Active contributor Joined: 12 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

Hey I've got a Samsung Barracuda (ST3200822A) that ran into some sort of power related incident. (I'm not exactly sure, but I tried a new power supply in my machine, and after that the drive no longer works.) When the drive receives power a spark and smell of burning comes from one of the diodes. (Small box attached with a metal strip on either side, so I'm just assuming here.) There's a small crack on the top of the diode and a bit of yellow discoloration where the spark came out.

I've seen some of you have resolved hard-drive problems by simply removing a diode. What would any of you say are the chances of this allowing me to get into this drive?

Also is it as simple as unsoldering and removing the diode? Should the spot be left open afterwards? (I know nothing about electronics but I have a friend that can help me out.)

Thanks in advance for any help. I've been stressing a lot over this drive as it has many years of life related files on it.

sevexpei · Active contributor Joined: 12 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

K gonna update since I'd like to at least have others learn from my experience.

My friend had a Seagate drive with very different specs from mine (120 gig instead of a 200 gig, different firmware, etc...) but the pcb had an identical chip layout so I figured what the hey, try it out. The computer powered, and the drive made some clicking noises as if it was trying to turn on, but no go...

So onto plan B, which involves what most people seem to have had success with, removing the busted diode. My friend cut one side, bent it back, installed the drive and... it detects! Windows informs me I need to scan it (has the actual volume name so the partition must be somewhat intact) but I skip that and see if I can get right to moving files. The computer took especially long to boot into windows (from a secondary drive), and once it finally does, things aren't so stable. The drive is just showing up as "E: Volume" and I can't access it through Disk Management. (It just kinda freezes.)

So as it stands I've got a big disc scan running from the Windows startup. The first 20% went okay but now it's reading hundreds of thousands of unreadable file segments. I can only hope that once this finishes I'll be able to grab some or all of my precious files. (There are so few!)

sevexpei · Active contributor Joined: 12 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

After the windows scan finished we proceded to try GeDataBack, which tested for a while and then returned a message to the effect of "No filesystem found". We tried a linux partition program called GParted which detects the drive with the volume name and size, but "---" for "space used" and "space free". So there's definitely something seriously wrong, which is weird cause the drive runs pretty smooth. It was in a PC with failing capacitors though, so who knows what could have gone wrong. Gonna keep trying tonight though!

sevexpei · Active contributor Joined: 12 Jan 2009 Posts: 5

Here's my final update! I took the drive home and plugged it into a computer I borrowed from my friend, ready to do just about anything to get my data back.

Drive detected, and by some miracle of science it SHOWS UP IN WINDOWS! I immediately start to copy files but notice it's taking a very long time, sometimes having errors, sometimes freezing. I persist and manage to copy every bit of important data save for a dozen files that won't be missed at all.

So yeah! With a little luck and a ton of effort do-it-yourself data recovery is possible! Even if you're not super high tech. Good luck to anyone else in the same situation as me.