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General discussion

Putting wrong power source in hard drive

Nov 22, 2006 11:05AM PST

Hello

I?ve done something really stupid. I sent my computer off for repair (Apple Powerbook G4) but as it was not going to be ready before I left on my travels I asked the repair company to send me my hard drive (60GB). I put the hard drive in a caddy and connected it to my friends Mac (here?s the stupid bit) I put an AC power source and not DC as it said on the caddy and now my friends (ex) USB port dosn?t work nor does my hard drive. I have tried it in a new caddy but it still does not work.
Does anybody have any ideas?
Cheers
Lee

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Nov 22, 2006 11:27AM PST

Data recovery houses. Try drivesavers.com and ontrack.com

Bob

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Doesn't sound good.
Nov 22, 2006 11:29AM PST

Just as a matter of interest, who makes the "caddy" that takes a Laptop HD and makes it connect to a USB port? Sounds like a piece of kit that could come in handy.

I use an adapter to connect laptop drives to an IDE cable and take power from the computers power supply or from an external drive enclosure.

My other question is how do you put AC into a device that only needs DC? Sounds like a design flaw.

On another note, was the HD working before you sent the machine away and does the drive only fit into the caddy, one way. How do you determine which pins carry the DC voltage for the drive?

P

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Bob's right.
Nov 22, 2006 11:40AM PST

When you installed the hard drive mechanism in the drive case, you would have seen the electronics on one side of the drive. One item you did not see was the motor that drives the spindle that spins the platters (at 7200 rpm) that hold the data. Also not visible to you are the armature mechanisms that hold the drive heads that move across the platters that read and write the data.

If the external circuit board blew out, that might be easy for a drive repair/data recovery company to fix. Chances are pretty good that in addition to blowing out that circuit board, the spindle motor and the armature mechanisms were impacted by the surge in AC power. There is a slight chance that the heads (being held by the armatures) went bananas and could have scruffed the platter surfaces.

If only external stuff was impacted, that is one thing - but if anything internal was impacted, the only way to get to the data is to actually open the drive - in a special "clean room" and with special tools read the platters sector by sector and recover whatever may be recoverable.

I presume you had no data back ups...

Bummer.

Good luck.