I had a PSU die and it seems it took the Hard Drive with it.

Events:
1.Computer would not turn on so replaced PSU.
2.Then, computer mechanically started but would not boot up.
3. Bought new HD and reloaded everthing.

Question:
Does this make sense?
Do you think the HD is salvageable?
If so, what might be best course of action?
Many Thanks!

Check www.grc.com and look for SpinRite.

That will let you recover data from a failed harddrive - it will take a LONG time.

I am thinking that data is fine on harddrive.

But maybe the circuit board on top of HD may have gotten fried when PSU went out. And that is reason it wont work.

Think this tool would work in that case?

Thanks for such quick repsonse.

IIRC Spinrite has a free trial period. It depends on what is damaged exactly if it works or not. It can't hurt to try and will only cost time if it does not work though.

Yes, it can be related. But that does not mean your circuit board is fried. I had a power surge in my apartment once that killed my HD, but it was not totally fried. The circuit board was still good. But DOS, Windows or even my Bios could not longer detect it at all. I got a program called "Getdataback" that was only about 60 bucks and installed into Windows it was able to detect the HD installed as a slave.
It was an old IDE HD and was FAT32, not NTFS. But Getdataback makes version for both FAT and NTFS.

Just in case your controller circuit board truly is fried, believe it or not, there are companies out there that can take the platters out and put them in a new HD case with new electronics. This service is not cheap, however. If your PCB is fried this is your only option. Since the platters will not spin up with a dead controller board.

If Spinrite does not work, Getdataback will. Worked for me! I recovered about 2,000 MP3 music files that I still have to this day.

Here's the link:
http://www.runtime.org/

And if neither of those work, it could very well be the PCB on the HDD. One way to tell, is if the HDD even spins up. If it's not spinning up it's almost certainly the PCB.

I had that happen, and found a replacement PCB, and recovered what I had on the HDD.

I found the new PCB on EBAY. It was around 45.00 but worth it to get the data.

It took a bit of searching to find the proper size TORQX bit screwdriver tho. It is the T8 size (at least on the Maxtor HDD), and I finally found one at SEARS.

I've used spinrite twice so far and it has been a great program. Once for a server drive recovery and another time to repair a defective sector.

It's worth a try and worth the money too. As MaxMhz said it will take a LONG time. In my case a 40gb hard drive on a 2ghz machine took approx 50+ to recover.

IIRC you can stop and start the process but it must complete to 100% to see any results.

Did you already try to use it as a second harddrive and access the data on there that way?
Sometimes that can work also.

Like Camp mentioned, options for a HD with problems start at the inexpensive end by plugging it in to your motherboard as a slave drive. If it's a logical problem (perhaps a corrupt boot sector), and not mechanical, this may work. If it's an IDE drive, be sure to do this while powered down. IDE drives (wide ribbon cable connection) are not hot-swappable. SATA drives (thinner data cable) can be connected/disconnected while the machine is powered up. An anti-static wrist strap is a good idea regardless.

The next cheapest option is software to read a damaged drive. Like OldBuzzard said, if the drive doesn't spin when power is applied (you should be able to hear it) then the problem is mechanical, and this software won't be able to help. Neat idea to try replacing the curcuit board BTW. I wouldn't have thought to try to find a replacement on eBay (nor what specifically to look for.)

The most expensive way to go, if all else fails, is something like these guys I went through most of the above steps first. I used a local contractor with proprietary software, instead of Getdataback or Spinrite. The only difference was that the local guy didn't charge anything if he couldn't recover any data. In my case, a multi-platter drive had failed (ironically my backup, failing after I'd formatted my C: drive to re-install Windows), and only one read-write head was still working (one had failed). It was like a failed RAID-in-a-box, where the software could only read from one platter with the good read head, in alternating 512 kb chunks, with the other half of the data stuck on the unaccessable platter.

Anyway, I wish you luck. Ontrack isn't cheap, but they can recover just about anything, as long as the platters are still there (I think this is one of the labs that does forensic recovery work, as well as recovery from fire-damaged HD's)

And as the local tech told me, "Always have your data in at least two places." In my case, that now means two external eSATA 1TB drives, with alternate weekly backups. If I go to reinstall Windows, I make sure BOTH copies are accessable before I proceed. This option isn't cheap, but it's less expensive than going to Ontrack.

thanks blotto - they stated $100 to look at it and minimum charge is $500 to fix . too rich for what i have to retrieve. I think i try to find a circuit board and give that a try.

Tahnks guys.

If you can't find a circuit board, but still want your data back, maybe buying the same disk again and swapping the circuit board might be an option.