Any way to revive a physically dead HDD?

[hob]

Hi guys, I've been searching the posts but can't find answers to my specific question.

My housemate said his Lacie external hard drive was dead.

So, I took a look at it. Apparently the power cord didn't work either, so we borrowed one from a friend who has the same drive.

I turned it on, and it lit up but didn't make a sound. I thought maybe, with the power supply not working the case might've burnt out or something.

So I did some drive surgery, and put his drive into one of my cases.

Turned it on, nothing. No noise.

So what's wrong with the disk? Can it be fixed?

Cheers !

 

[compuwar]

Hi guys, I've been searching the posts but can't find answers to my specific question.

My housemate said his Lacie external hard drive was dead.

So, I took a look at it. Apparently the power cord didn't work either, so we borrowed one from a friend who has the same drive.

I turned it on, and it lit up but didn't make a sound. I thought maybe, with the power supply not working the case might've burnt out or something.

So I did some drive surgery, and put his drive into one of my cases.

Turned it on, nothing. No noise.

So what's wrong with the disk? Can it be fixed?

Cheers !

It's impossible to diagnose this remotely. You *may* be able to replace the controller card with one from an identical model and get the data. If not, the n the only way you're going to get anything is $expensive$. It'll have to be opened in a clean room, put on a special machine and data off any non-damaged portions of the platters recovered. Kroll-Ontrack does this (you can try to half-a$$ it in a box, but it's dangerous and may cause more damage than is already there.)

Swapping controllers is about a 2 minute procedure for most drives if you've got the correct screwdriver and a donor drive. Just unplug the current board, unscrew it, do the same on the donor and then swap. Try to power up the donor first, as that'll let you know if it was the card.