I tried to swap out a CD-Rom for my 17yo son's computer while the power was on (I'm an idiot I guess). It shorted, I saw a spark then computer shut off. Tried to reboot but got disk error. Now I think the drive is dead but the bios sees it as WD1200BB and only 8.4gb. Can't change perameters in bios. Drive light comes on but drive is not seen by BartPE, Ubuntu, or WindowsXP Pro. When I put my hand on the drive I can feel VERY light vibrations, not sure if it is spinning. I bought a new HD for my son and he is back up and running but he had his whole life on that Western Digital 100gb drive. Photos of him and friends, Digital art he had made over the last few years and of course a couple of hundred MP3s. Can anyone help rescue some or all of the data? Can't afford hundreds of dollars for data recovery. Thanks for any help or suggestions you can provide.

Hi,

The first thing would be to make sure the drive isn't spinning.
In this case probably the motor controller is burnt. U will have to find a similar drive, WDxx00BB-xxCAxx and try to swap the boards.
There may be compatibility issues, but I will tell U more about these if they arise. First find a similar drive or a PCB of it ('x'=don't care')
regards,
pepe

Well, my exact match PCB for my WD1000BB 00CAA1 finally arrived. Swapped it with the dead one. Ahhh, I thought, as the computer booted and I saw the the hard drive recognized by the BIOS correctly! My heart pounded as WindozXP loaded... It's definatly spinning now! I'm IN I thought...
Oooops, spoke too soon, WondozXP not seeing it. Nothing else will either (Ubuntu, BartPE, etc). Appears I need a chip swap????? Don't have the skills to do that. I need someone with a hot air soldering rework station I guess, so I can swap the firmware chip. Any help?

I feel i'm having a "deja vu". You have post this question in another forum, long ago. Take the drive to a recovery company if you really need the data.

I would consider sending your hard disk to a reputable company to avoid further damage to the drive. Have you tried to scan the drive with MHDD? what are the results?

To replace the chip you would need a heat gun (http://www.action-electronics.com/grc/we6966c.jpg) and a good pair of tweezers. the chip you need to replace will be the only chip with 8 legs on it (here is a picture and the chip has 4 legs either side and is at the centre of the PCB: http://xbitlabs.com/images/storage/wd-raptor-x/p5s.jpg )

i have given you some help but if you value your data I recommend you send your hard drive to someone who has experience with this.