Maximum PC

Hi, I lent my 1TB Toshiba hard drive to a friend for him to copy over some things onto the computer. When he brought it back to me it was completely dead. You could tell it was fried because of the smell. When you plug the USB cable into the computer, nothing at all happens, so i pulled it out of the cover and plugged it directly into data cables on my desktop and nothing shows up, not even in device manager. Is there anything i can do to get the data back?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, Jayden.

Yes, but it will cost you an arm and a leg since the only thing that will recover it is to send it to someone who will have to do a forensics recovery, basically.

I guess they could try swapping out the controller too. I dunno, depends on how bad the damage penetrated.

Really? Damn.
Thanks for the reply anyway.

As a hope spot, see if it's still under warranty. For all you know, it could've been a faulty power supply.

Do as LatiosXT suggested, buy an exact copy of the drive (Model number and part number) and switch the electronics packages bolted on the bottom of the drive. You may get lucky and revive the drive. There are only mechanical parts inside along with the pickup coils on the arms, so it might work....if you have a lot of data on the drive it is well worth the price of a second "repair" drive.

Nasty

Okay, thankyou for all your help. I'm so glad to hear there is a chance. Should i be speaking to someone with experience before trying to repair or is it pretty straight foward?

Jayden,
I have successfully replaced a fried circuit board on one of my drives. It was working one day, next day dead. You do have to have a torx screw driver and carefully match the cides on the cicuit board label. Try http://www.hddzone.com/ Read the tutorials. When I did mine, they actually sent me 2 different revsions of the same board with the stipulation that I return the one that did not work. I was very happy about recovering my pictures!
Greg