I bricked my Verbatim external hd when I accidentally used a 19V power supply (I could smell the magic smoke).

The disk would not spin up. The power led was just emitting a short burst after pressing the power button.

I removed the disk from the enclosure and tried a diffrent USB>SATA board without success. After some research in the forums I discovered that the TVS might have sacrificed itself for the rest of the drive.
This site was also very helpful:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/TVS_diode_FAQ.html

One thing that was special for me that measuring the resistance of the TVS didn't yield unambiguous results (probably due to some capacitors in the circuitry).

I decided to press my luck and disconnect the TVS as suggested in some posts.

First I tried desoldering but I would have needed a lot more heat than I was comfortable to remove the TVS.
The next step involved pliers but (at least with the tools I had) I couldnt do it without applying major force to the pcb (and surrounding components) when the pliers slipped.

The final thing I tried was a dremel to cut the contact on one side of the TVS.

Now everything works again - sweet.

The hard drive was a Samsung HD204UI.

Nice tutorial, but it's pretty clear that what you get here is something that I would recommend to any amateurs.

Just side note that for the curious that are looking for cheap fix but don't want to risk their data. I would call this "kind of" risky.

_________________
Nationwide data recovery services for RAID servers and laptops - http://www.harddriverecovery.org/

Yes it works again and everyone here has told many people how to do this over and over again. But you are running this without protections. If you happen to put the wrong power supply on it again you will fry more than the TVS. I am sorry it is good to remove the TVS to get off data but either replace it or get a new HDD now that you have your data back.

_________________
Iorana Haraharaini