Let me start by saying that I am a very technical person, I work in the IT field and do hardware and software support. I don't have experience with data recovery (hardware) and it embarrasses me greatly to have to post this but I need your help.

I have a friend whose PC wouldn't even boot into safe mode. He didn't care about that, he just DESPERATELY needed data off of it. He's been working on his summer intern project all summer for his co-op position. So I figure no big deal, I'll just slave the drive with my SATA/IDE to USB converter and copy the data off. Well, I wasn't paying attention and like a complete idiot, got the power connection backwards and fried the PCB on the hard drive.

There are three smaller components that fried, along with the "Pegasus" square chip in the middle and a smaller square chip in the corner that says "Smooth" on it. I'm sure the PCB is completely dead and am not going to try and repair it. I figure I can swap it with a working PCB and get his data back.

The drive is an 80GB SATA WD Caviar SE WD800JD-75MSA3. I have a doner drive which has model WD800JD-60LSA0 that is the exact same form factor as the fried one but when I try to use it, the drive powers up, clicks a few times and spins down, then spins back up, clicks, spins down, etc, etc. I assume a doner PCB has to be from the exact same model number.

After doing some research on this site, I now realize how much trouble I am in. WD drives seem to be the worse when it comes to situations like this. I just ordered another doner drive with the EXACT same model number as the bad one. Although the mfg dates and DCM are different, I hope it will still work.

My questions are, besides swapping the PCB, what else do I need to do to try and get this to work? I've read about flashing the ROM to the doner PCB, having to swap the chip at U12, etc. Based on the damage I did, do you think I did damage to the components inside the case? If so, can I fix them? I have NOT opened the case yet and really don't want to. Although I do have access to a 100 clean room.

I hope with all of your collective experience, you guys can point me in the right direction so I am not wasting my time on things that obviously (to you) won't work. I feel like a complete idiot and feel so terrible that I did this and I am just trying to get my friend's data back.

Thank you all SO much in advance!

Just an update. I've been researching this non-stop and it seems that even if the donor PCB is a match, that I will still have to swap the ROM chip at U12 from the patient PCB to the donor PCB, correct? Or can I get lucky and just swap the PCB?

Also, if the PCB swap and ROM chip swap wont work, could I swap out the heads from the donor as long as they are the same? That would take care of a bad preamp as well right?

Like I mentioned before, I have access to a clean room and the tools to swap the heads. I watched a video on YouTube and it doesn't seem too hard. I know you're probably thinking I'm in over my head with a "head" swap but I am very good with my hands. I repair laptop motherboards and LCD monitors, etc. I know my way around a soldering iron as well. I honestly think I can do this myself and save $$$. The local data doctors near me want $150 just to eval the disk, then anywhere from $300 to $1500 to recover the data. That seems pretty crazy to me. And having worked around computers and IT related equipment my whole life, I know how easy it is to "justify" that kind of service when in the end, if you're good with your hands and know what you're doing, it's pretty simple. There seems to be quite a bit of info on the net about this exact problem I'm having and I've already learned so much in a few hours of research.

If you absolutely insist on diy, then suggest practicing on a drive other than your friend's, then you would know or appreciate better what you can or can not do.

What is also important to understand is that you do not want to do something unrelated to the problem (e.g. swapping heads when the problem is the PCB, etc.)

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Everyone that come here claim to have years of experience , have watched videos on youtube and quite usually it's not their drive but it's from a friend. It seems a constant, and honestly I am "a lil' bit" skeptical when I read this, but let's assume "bona fide".
So said, if you feel so confident, try at your own risk THEN, in case things go wrong, REFER ONLY to the people that made you think it was so easy (especially HS work) , assuming you manage to contact them and they will actively help you. Simple.
Another good solution : post on another DIYer to DIYer oriented forum, you may get better results in terms of communication (not in terms of outcomes, though) , this is the wrong place maybe...

Well I take back what I said about a head swap being easy... I decided to try taking a spare drive apart, down to the heads and put it back together to see if I could actually do it. Well, after I put it back together, the drive spins up, clicks a few times, spins back down and repeats this. So I'm pretty sure I killed the heads when I removed it. I know I could have been a little more careful but since this was not the patient or the donor drive, I wasn't. Still, I don't think I am going to attempt a head swap. Hopefully I will get the donor drive today and swap the PCB and U12 chip and pray the drive works. If it doesn't I will be contacting the professionals.

Good idea not to try the headswap yourself, especially on this particular drive. If the data is important follow your own advice and go pro.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

Well I thought I'd give my final update. The donor drive arrived but the chips on the PCB were different makes. I swapped the ROM chip to the donor PCB anyways and when I booted it up, click, click, click... So yea... I tried...

The drive is on its way to DR, should be there tomorrow. I will know if the data is recoverable by Thursday. Keeping my fingers crossed...