www.deadharddrive.com

[ben23]

Hey guys, back in March, I managed to fry my WD800 by pulling the master/slave jumper out while the drive was running, the drive stopped spinning, and it managed to cause one of the chips to overheat to the point where it left a scorch mark on the chip and burnt the foam underlay between drive and board.

Anyhow, I panicked as this was my drive with all my music and photos and videos on it, and the last backup made was 1/4/06, and there was practically nothing on it then compared to now.

Then, the 13GB Seagate drive in the computer (the master drive) with XP and system files on it fails from old age (made in 2000). The files weren't a worry, just that I didn't have a working PC in the house.

So I was left without a PC. So I went to the computer shop where I had done work placement for school, and managed to get a 20GB seagate drive off of him for nothing, and installed XP on it and got the computer running again.

Did a google on HDD recovery and repair and found the remedy of swapping the logic boards.

Luckily I had left school the week after work placement and started work at an emergency vehicle manufacturer as an auto electrical apprentice.

Working with Mercedes Sprinter vans, you need Torx drivers, and one of the guys happened to have a set with a T8 bit, the right size needed to remove the screws that held the logic board in place.

On eBay I set about looking for an identical drive, and to my luck, one popped up, but the picture was blurry and I couldn't see the date of manufacture, nor the firmware version.

Nonetheless, I won the auction and she posted the drive to me. It arrived, and how lucky was I, it was the exact same model, and made 2 days prior to my fried one.

So I took both drives into work, used the Torx drivers to swap the boards and then tried out the drive when I got home.

Plugged it all back in, set the jumper to slave, and turned the computer on...

The drive started spinning.....

The drive was recognized in the BIOS....

The 2 partitions were present in My Computer....

The party started shortly after......

I was cheering that I had fixed the drive, gotta love eBay and sheer luck.

Anyway hope this helps someone.

Thanks

-Ben
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-Ben