Hard Drives Have Fried. Need Advice

My brother has encountered a slight problem, and I was hoping you could give me some advice.

Apparently, he disconnected his PC for the night. (As in - actually disconnected it from the plug.) When he tried to reconnect it the following morning, his PSU fried; not only that, but his two hard drives fried along with it.

Now, his PC just hangs at bootup when it's trying to detect the hard drives.

Now, the one with the most important information is a Seagate 8.6Gb Medalist 8240 Hard Drive. I was hoping someone could give me some advice on how to get back the most vital information from it, without the help of a costly data retrieval service.

 

Can you hook it up as a secondary drive in another pc and retrieve the data that way.

 

Well - no, apparently not. I asked him about that and of course he had thought about it already.

If I recall correctly, the thing is that the system doesn't recognize the drives at all (it just hangs); i.e.: it's not that parts of the magnetic disk are fried, but rather that the drive itself is.

 

Thanks Major Attitude.

I just called him; apparently, he tried hooking up the drives to another PC as soon as it happened, and they didn't work. Also, he says there was some delightful smoke coming out of them when it happened.

 

I just talked to him, and he says it's 95% certain that the electronics in the drive itself are fried. i.e.: it's not the actual magnetic disc that is the problem, but rather all the electronics.

Maybe there's some way to, for example, take a new identical drive and mount the magnetic disc from the old one on it?
I know this is pushing it, but he apparently had some rather valuable stuff there, so I'm open to any suggestion (that doesn't cost me a thousand bucks).

Incidentally, the drives are:

• Western Digital Caviar 80Gb WD800JB-00CRA1
• Seagate Medalist 8420 8.6Gb ST38420A

Oh, and thanks again for all the help so far!

 

Maybe contact Western Digital and Seagate for suggestions, and costs. They will have clean rooms, recommended when you try to disassemble hard drives. Bazza

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I had a similar problem a while back where the electronic board was fried..I took an identical drive and replaced it's board should work if that is the case..

 

OK. Thanks a lot for all the help!