I have a Western Digital My Book Essentials 250gb (mdl no. WD2500I032). The green circular light at the front has stopped coming on (it flickered and then went off) and there was a slight smell of burning.

The drive is out of the warranty period. The troubleshooters at WD said it might be a faulty power adapter and sent me a replacement. That, however, doesn't seem to be the problem and it seems to be with the enclosure/drive itself -- the smell seems to be emanating from where the adapter plugs into the drive.

Is there a chance that the hard drive itself might have survived this "frying"? I've seen instructions on how to remove the drive from the enclosure but was wondering if anyone could talk me through how to connect the internal drive that I remove to a Mac or PC?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Btw, the hard drive mdl no. inside is WD2500JB-00REA0

discount hard drive PCB and take a look.

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Virtually 100% of the time I have this happen, its simply the USB controller in the enclosure that has died. A few times I've been able to fix the controller by replacing a blown cap or voltage regulator but the simple answer is your drive is probably OK. Just purchase a generic USB enclosure and look online for instructions on how to disassemble the enclosure to get to your drive.

problem could be the case as they pump out more voltage then they should.

or possible the burning is going from a bad connection on the motor ic smooth chip.
possible might have done damaged to the preamp

so longs its not the main cpu you should be ok

thanks v much. will get an enclosure and see if the drive can be salvaged

I have seen this problem a few times. especially on WD enclosures , not just 2.5 usb but the 3.5 powered ones too.
I cant say what causes it - sometimes the interface (board between the HDD and usb cable) burns out completely - sometimes you cant see anything.

Disassemble your enclosure - its not difficult- sometimes they hide screws under stickers or the rubber legs of the enclosure.
It will most likely be inside another enclosure or metal caddy, so unscrew it from there and carefully unplug the hdd handling it by the sides - not directly pressing the top or bottom of hdd.

Purchase a SATA to USB (or fire wire if you use MAC) enclosure. Assemble it in there and plug into pc/mac - all should be fine as long as you hear your hard drive spin up.

Take the old enclosure and power adaptor and throw it away.No reason trying to fix it.

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You may want to inspect the boards for signs of damage before plugging anything in.

If this is your drive's PCB ...

http://i50.tinypic.com/2j31jbo.jpg

... then check the SMOOTH motor controller chip and the D5 and D6 TVS diodes near the power connector.

Also examine the USB-PATA bridge board.