Well, one horrible thing that you hear about all the time but don't actually imagine happening to your data just happened to me. My Vantec NexStar 3 enclosure just fried my harddrive. It's been in there for a few weeks without issues. Tonight, I smelled something smoking, drive won't turn on. I open it up to an awful stench, looks like maybe a voltage regulator or something on the actual Seagate
ST3200822A has burned out and is cracked. Can anybody identify what this component is? You can actually see the residue left on the drive cage.
Any suggestions on what I should do at this point? Will I be able to swap circuit boards with another similar drive from the line or do I need a circuit board from the exact same model of 200GB 7200.7 Seagate HDD? I'm definitely not using the enclosure again (maybe with some dead drives from my 486 to test it out). What are my chances for data recovery? This is making me quite upset. Could I use a board from my friend's similar 160GB Seagate of the same line? Model number is slightly different but it's also a 7200.7 drive. Is there any soldering required to remove the circuit board or replace it?
Does anybody here have this model of drive or know where I could get one? I guess I'll try ebay but it would be nice to have one I could get locally soon, I'm quite anxious to see if I can save my data.
I know recovery places usually charge thousands of dollars. Does anybody have experience with any locally in Calgary?