Hi
guys 3 days back my computer got shut down with smoke coming out of my WD 500gb SATA hdd , it had a peculiar smell to it. the hdd doesnt get detected. I have inquired about Data recovery which were listed in the wdc site but the prices are too steep for me to bear.
After inquiring with my office sys-admin i got to know that i can get my burnt hdd pcb repaired.
So i want to figure out anyone who knows people or company in Mumbai who do such kind of repair, or a reasonably charged data recovery solution

Hey there
Two years ago my school had a power surge on one of the servers, and it blew two WDs. My boss decided to just throw the disks, and I asked him if I can have them. I oppened them up and saw that on both drives, the chip that controls the heads was blown up. It may be that you have the same problem. The smoke may have come from the sponge that is between the PCB and the casing of the drive. My suggestion is to look for an exact model like yours, (WD500AAKS), buy it and change the PCB from the new one to the old one. Better yet, If you think you are up to the challenge, replace the heads also because it may happen that the chip on the arm is also busted. I dont know of a way to tell if that one is dead or not. But just to be on the safe side not to burn the new PCB, IF YOU CAN, go ahead and change the heads. If you are afraid of doing this, then go for the PCB only. The positive side of not immediately going for the heads replacement is that you will preserve the health of the new HD. The down side is that if the heads are busted, you will fry the new board also. Its your choice man. I have a busted WD just like yours, and thought on doing the same drill I sugest here, but I bought a WD500AACS, which turned out NOT to be compatible even though the 5th and 6th letter in the DCM code were a perfect mach. So, try to find the EXACT same model as yours. Fixing the PCB may be an option, but you dont find people who do that kind of work on every corner... and it may be more expensive to fix the old PCB instead of buying a new HD. Hope this helps.