My external drive went out on me a few days ago. I think it was painless, I was using it one night earlier this week looking at stuff and putting stuff on it and the next day ... nothing.

I'm hoping that finding a replacement board will bring it back (only if it's just enough so I can get some of my data off of it) since it didn't make any clicking noise, or noise of any kind.

And the usual methods of taking it out of the enclosure and hooking it up to a different computer and testing it probably made sure the board would never live again. I hooked it up internally (as you would any normal bare bones hdd, to it's normal connectors) and within a short period of time I start smelling burning plastic-like smell and then the smoke appears. I quickly power down and take out the drive, unscrew the PCB and examine the drive. The board had gotten really hot and started melting the foam that was between the board and the rest of the drive (you'll be able to see the two spots where it happened in the images).

The images I put on here are of the actual drive itself and the board (front and back).

*I read the forums for a few days before signing up and saw some success stories so hopefully I can a board and be a part of the success.

Badly burned PCB - this one should really be taken to a local DR company. There could also be internal damage to the preamp on this drive. Also this needs to have ROM moved to new board and takes skill and sometimes tools to do this one. If you destroy the ROM it will cost more to repair this drive and get your data off of it.

Sorry but this job should really not be performed by you on this one if your data is important it is not a simple plug and play move on this one

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Iorana Haraharaini

as poehere told you don't mess with this STARLING, If data is important to you just send it to a pro at once. If not then you may give it a try and replace the PCB's and transplant ROM's.

Good luck

it an simple case. you can try to find out a PCB for swap and swap ROM to new PCB at the same time.

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data recovery service[/b]

I don't think so!
Yea sure you need to swap over the rom to a new replacement pcb. The easy bit!
It is most likely the preamp is blown and you will have to find an identical replacement.
The drive needs to be opened in a clean room environment and the preamp/head assembly has to be swapped over.
Then the fun would begin with the head alignment issues.