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Is my HDD shorting out my other IDE Drives?

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I have a home built PC with 1 IDE port on the motherboard. Recently, I noticed my HDD was running slow, so i ran Avast Anti-Virus to check for any malware. It went through the full scan in windows, and quarantined any questionable files. It then rebooted and did a pre-windows scan also. When the scan finished, my HDD no longer showed up in BIOS, and is not able to boot. I replaced the HDD with a new drive, and it works fine. I would like to save any data that I can from the old HDD, but whenever i try to hook-up the old HDD, none of the other IDE drives will be recognized in BIOS. I have a DVD-ROM and my new HDD that are currently sharing the IDE cable, but neither will work with the old HDD hooked up. Any ideas on how to save my data?

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Clarifications

In reply to Is my HDD shorting out my other IDE Drives?

Clarifications

It may not be possible to save any data on the drive

In reply to Is my HDD shorting out my other IDE Drives?

But I would start off by fitting the Drive to a USB Caddy and trying to use it from there. You’ll need to set the Drive to Master not Cable Select with most USB/IDE Caddies or if you want something more technical useful you could get a USB to SATA/IDE Cable and use that with the drive.

As these devices support most current HDD types in use it can be used for just about any Data Recovery or whatever is required.

As for the drive if it’s not being recognized by the USB Interface Card under Windows which is what I’m assuming you are running you can try changing the Printed Circuit Board on the HDD and that may allow you to recover any Data on the drive. If you want try this you need the exact same PCB as is fitted to your current HDD and you should expect to ruin the Circuit Board so don’t expect it to be of much use after you recover any Data.

Currently there are some companies who will supply you with a replacement PCB for your HDD though I have only ever read about these places in the Current Issue of PC User an Australian Computer Magazine and I have no idea of just how good they are or are not. Previously we used to buy Second Hand HDD of the Make & Model of the dead Drive and remove the Circuit Boards off them to use on the dead drive and we always expected both of the drives to be useless after we finished.

Here I’m assuming that you do not want to go to the expense of sending the Drive to a Professional Data Recovery Specialist and pay them the Prices that they Charge. On Track want a Quote of somewhere around the $400.00 Mark which will tell you what you can expect to recover and this will be taken off the cost of the Recovery if you chose to go ahead with it. 😉

Col

Thank you!

In reply to Is my HDD shorting out my other IDE Drives?

I will try the USB Caddy and see how that goes. On my way to Fry’s!
Thank you for your input and advice. I will keep you updated as soon as i get back.

I Ordered a USB Caddy from Amazon …

In reply to Is my HDD shorting out my other IDE Drives?

That i received today. The caddy works great, just not with my drive. I tested it with a known working drive, and it shows right up, but when i try the broken drive, the read/write light shows green for about 5 seconds while the HDD is spinning up and then turns red. I noticed some damage on the HDD today, and took some pics. There is a broken “circuit” (not really sure what it is), and was hoping you guys could shed some light on this for me. Is the PCB fixable or is it too far damaged….i have looked into replacement PCB’s and will take that step if necessary, but im hoping there is a way to fix the existing PCB.

Having some trouble linking the pics…is there anyway to link a pic in these forums?

Reponse To Answer

In reply to I Ordered a USB Caddy from Amazon …

I use Photobucket which works really well.

However without seeing the picture you need to understand that the PCB has Surface Mount Technology and this requires special Soldering Stations. If you think that it’s worth buying one and attempting to repair the PCB that’s great but I last looked 15 years ago and with a suitable Weller Soldering Station coming in at 45K + disposables I figured that it was cheaper to buy new circuit boards.

The Components on Surface Mount are small stuck tot he Circuit Board with a glue and Ultraviolet soldered to the Circuit Board. While you may be able to replace a resistor or similar any IC with more than 4 solder points is going to be very difficult and the VLSI [i]Very Large Scale Integration[/i] IC’s impossible as the legs are too close together and they require perfect placement to prevent cross connections.

For replacement PCB’s this may be useful

http://www.hdd-parts.com/

Col

[Author]

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