I wish my first post here was under better circumstances, however I am seeking advice on a recently deceased loved one, one of my Samsung HD204UIs.

I've been using this drive for a couple years now, and I just got a second SSD so I moved this one to my HAF-X hot swappable bay. Unfortunately this is the first time I've used this bay and upon powering up the drive immediately began to release copious amounts of toxic smelling smoke. I turned it off as soon as I noticed but the damage was already done.

I've tried running this again in the old bay, and in an external enclosure with no luck. It spins up for a second then starts clicking and is not recognized by windows.

I've also noticed some obvious damage to the PCB, as pictured.

So now I'm praying that there is a relatively inexpensive fix for this in order to recover the data. Would swapping the pcb help in this case? I would not think that a damaged pcb could cause such a pronounced click, but I am far from an expert on hdds.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

http://i59.tinypic.com/2l9r0c3.jpg

The damaged IC generates the -5V supply for the preamp on the headstack, so I'm guessing that the preamp could be dead. If so, then a PCB swap would be pointless.

If you do decide on a PCB swap, then you may need to transfer the 8-pin Winbond chip from patient to donor. This chip is located between the Samsung SDRAM and the Marvell MCU.

The following PCB supplier includes a firmware transfer in the price:
http://www.onepcbsolution.com/samsung-pcb.html

Best of luck.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.