I am writing this topic so that anyone that is searching for USB hard drives solutions know that it is a BAD idea to throw away things before you have solved your problem.

I see it regularly on the forum and this week have had a hard disk presented from an enclosure, and also a single NAND chip from a USB flash drive that the customer had another shop look at.. they threw away the rest after the shop told them they only need the NAND chip. I was able to recover this one, but they were lucky it was an old SM and damage was purely physical.

Reasons:
-some enclosures encrypt your Hard Disk without you ever needing to set it up. throwing away a broken enclosure can mean a dead end to recovery.

-Some enclosure issues could be a simple fix. With help from electronics experts here, you may be able to fix your enclosure with some guidance.

-It helps to identify aspects that can help with recovery such as versions of boards and possible issues that crop up on same units.

**You should NEVER throw away burnt, broken, faulty USB enclosures, HDD PCB's after swapping them no matter how damaged.**

ALWAYS clearly mark original parts and donors when trying different things out.

When do you throw it away? AFTER EVERYTHING YOU NEED HAS BEEN RECOVERD SAFELY!

Great, the more places people can see the advice the better, Thanks Spildit. I hate seeing people lose data because of easily preventable mistakes.