Damaged hard drive, replacement chipboard??

nl

I reciently had a house party and my hard drive was physically damaged in the mayham. I used an internal hard drive as an external one by using an IDE to USB2 adapter.

I did not actually know it was physically damaged until about a week of trying to do scandisks. But I did see that one of the 40 small connections between the IDE connector and the chipboard had been broken and was bent upwards. I proceeded to just try push it back down and see if everything was ok again. There was no improvement.

When I plug it in, it registers as a hard disk wih the correct amount of free and used capacity (130GB used, 20GB free). But when I explore the hard disk and try to open the folder they are all emply!!

The chipboard is removable by means of five screws. So I removed it and now I am hoping to get a replacement to see if it will resolve my problem. The hard disk is a 160GB 2MB cache Samsung spinpoint. Model number SP1604N. I bought it about 3 years ago in Aldi if thats any help.

Id appreciate any help on this problem. I would be willing to buy one of these hard drives off someone or if I could somehow just get a replacement chip board.

Ghost Train

Given that you can access some info on the harddisk I would say the board is probably fine, as long as you were able to bend the pin back into place. Did the hard drive fall or take a sharp knock. This would more likely cause damage to the heads that read the info. Maybe some file tables can't be read etc. If this is the case you might still be able to recover some of the data with software

The software at this site is supposed to be good, so might be worth trying a trial version of the software. http://www.runtime.org/

I've recovered photos from a currupt hard drive before with free software from http://www.pcinspector.de/

This type of software can be quite slow. Might take days to scan a large disk

SouperComputer

If it got a wallop, then the problem is that the head has hit the platters causing damage to themselves. A new logic board is a waste of time and money to be honest.

Depending on how important the data is, you have two choices:

1) Attempt to DIY it and risk loosing the data
2) Send it to a professional recovery company and be prepared to cough up 1K+

Again, just be warned that any attempt to recover the data by yourself will increase the risk of loosing everything. That said, scandisk has probably fudged thiings up plenty anyway

If you are giving is a crack yourself, you can try freezing the drive. When you take it back out, let it warm up a little though or again you could make things worse. You could also put the HD in a static bag and put and ice pack either side on the outside.

nl

Thanks for the help guys.
Sending it to a professional data recovery company is not an option (1K!!!). I only used the hard drive for divx movies and music so its not that critical. Just means ill have to spend a few weeks re-ripping all the dvds and cds!! Far from ideal.

ill try out that software but I dont think its going to work. I think it might be damaged sectors. When I turn the hard drive on it continuously makes loud clicking noises like its trying to find information but cant get it. But then again im not sure if this is a logic boards problem or a heads problem. ill be much happier if I could somehow get a new logic board and find out once and for all.

Would it be a massive and expensive deal to try get a logic board off Samsung??

SouperComputer

When I turn the hard drive on it continuously makes loud clicking noises like its trying to find information but cant get it.

Its called the click of death! Your best bet to get a logic board from an identical drive from ebay. It needs to be exactly the same, including firmware version. If its not, bye bye data.

My 2c, there is probably a 5% chance that a new logic board is going to help you.