Hello, I have a Seagate external USB drive about 4 years old. It suddenly won't power up so I'm pretty sure something happened to the power section. It's not under warranty any more and I haven't used a soldering iron in years. I'm wondering if I crack it open, will the drive inside have a standard IDE and power interface such that I can chain it to my laptop drive and pull the data off? And if so, would anyone happen to know the pin interface so I could get the right ribbon?

It has an amazing lack of information on it but here's what it does have:
part# 9W6044-560
Serial# 5JS65ES5


Thanks in advance for any help!

yes. inside u going to find a IDE or SATA hdd. And if u are lucky - the problem is indeed with ur external enclosure and not with the HDD itself.

Open the enclosure and tell us what you find, eg model number on label of hard drive. Detailed photos would be helpful.

Does the drive spin up, or attempt to spin up? Any buzzing, beeping, clicking noises?

Any LEDs?

Do you have a multimeter?

Did you overvolt the drive? Did you drop it?

If you are a Windows user, can you detect the enclosure with the following Microsoft utility:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_ID ... ew.x86.exe

You may receive better help at Seagate's forums:
http://forums.seagate.com/

Surgery was a success (considering I wasn't trying to save the enclosure). It was definitely an issue with the power section.

I'm attaching two files, one a picture before disassembly and the second is a picture of the drive's informational sheet. It's a barracuda 7200 rpm 160GB.

I found a site with detailed instructions and pictures on removing the enclosure.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Disasse ... Harddrive/

Cheers!