well not a good day today, my 500GB Western Digital WD5000AAKS Hard drive completely died, no sign of it dying, no smoke, no nothing, was just using its day by day and today it just stopped appearing in bios and on Windows, it doesnt spin and shows no sign of power, so i figured i'd check out the PCB on the hard drive itself and well..... http://imageshack.us/g/695/20110724235154.jpg/, judging by the burn mark on one of those chips, its dead, anything i could do to bring back the drive?, like new PCB with eeprom swap or professional repairs etc?

Thanks is advance

hi,
your spindle motor controller is gone ... i don't suggest you to repair it and use it again, could be unsafe as if this chip is burned may be you can have some hda problems causing the failure.
About data, yes you can swap the PCB but the ROM on this drive is embedded (U12 is missing) so you will need to rebuild ROM content from SA if HDA is still ok.
So i suggest you to find a PRO in your area
Bye
Luca

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Data Recovery pro in Italy
www.ultrarecovery.com