I wish my first post here was under better circumstances, however I am seeking advice on a recently deceased loved one, one of my Samsung HD204UIs.
I've been using this drive for a couple years now, and I just got a second SSD so I moved this one to my HAF-X hot swappable bay. Unfortunately this is the first time I've used this bay and upon powering up the drive immediately began to release copious amounts of toxic smelling smoke. I turned it off as soon as I noticed but the damage was already done.
I've tried running this again in the old bay, and in an external enclosure with no luck. It spins up for a second then starts clicking and is not recognized by windows.
I've also noticed some obvious damage to the PCB, as pictured.
So now I'm praying that there is a relatively inexpensive fix for this in order to recover the data. Would swapping the pcb help in this case? I would not think that a damaged pcb could cause such a pronounced click, but I am far from an expert on hdds.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
http://i59.tinypic.com/2l9r0c3.jpg