Okay here's the story, about 2 years ago at college I was helping a friend build a pc and after I finished, I was moving his data back onto his new harddrive from mine which he stored it on. Somehow when putting my drive back into my pc and rearranging the molex connections, I made the mistake of plugging the power into my drive while the PSU was on. There was a "pop" noise and from then on I've yet to be able to get it to boot.

There is tons of data I really want off the drive, I've tried hotswapping it as a secondary drive on a different pc, but after plugging in the IDE cable I get no recognition. I've done a fair amount of research in recovering the drive and I've heard of possibly replacing the IDE Card on the actual HD might solve the problem. However, this would mean I need to find a similar drive (western digital 200gig) with a close MDL#/DATE/DCM#, or so I've been told.

I would really like any input from anyone who can help, besides getting the drive re-plated and costing thousands, I'm down for anything.

Thanks
Ed

You've got the details down about right...but with a drive that new, you will an exact match to even have a chance of it working when you replace the circuit board.

If you don't want to spend the big $$$ to have it recovered, then use the warranty and consider all the data lost.

Swap at your own risk! (http://www.iswamp.com/data-recovery/hard-drive-repair-pcb.php)

Ebay could be worth a search for a "match" if you are so determined.

Probably a silly question, but isn't it possible to swap the old platters into an identical working drive? :confused:

Hardware repair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery#Recovery_techniques)

Examples of physical recovery procedures are: removing a damaged PCB (printed circuit board) and replacing it with a matching PCB from a healthy drive (this often entails the movement of a microchip from the original board to the replacement), changing the original damaged read/write head assembly with matching parts from a healthy drive, removing the hard disk platters from the original damaged drive and installing them into a healthy drive, and often a combination of all of these procedures. All of the above described procedures are highly technical in nature and should never be attempted by an untrained individual. All of these procedures will almost certainly void the manufacturer's warranty.

... and are likely to cost kilobucks.