Help With Pcb On Hdd

I have a hard drive with a burnt up board and unfortunately I lost the eeprom chip in the process.

Is it possible to rebuild the boot record or whatever other disk files I would need to get that data back off of there? If so what software would I need to accomplish that task, and what are my odds of getting it without data loss. Most of the data is disposable however I have some irreplaceable pictures of my deceased daughter on there and I would hate to lose that if I can avoid it.

Thank in advance guys!

 

I assume that you're talking about the circuit board underneath the drive. This is actually the hard drive controller. On old drives (over 15 years ago), you could buy the same brand/model drive, replace your dead board with the new one, and your drive works again. Unfortunately, that trick doesn't work with newer drives:



Your best bet is to contact a data recovery service and find out how much it will cost to get your data off the drive.

 

Oh wow! First and foremost, I am so sorry to hear of the loss of your daughter. We as parents are never suppose to bury our kids.

Even back in the old days, swapping boards didn't always work. It may have gotten the drive working again, but that was no guarantee the data was recoverable.

I agree with Mister Krinkle and you best bet is to hire the services of a data recovery service. This will not be cheap as it typically involves advanced technical training, disassembly of the drive in a "clean room" environment, reading [hopefully] the platters individually with expensive and sophisticated equipment and then painstakingly assembling the all the file segments (fragments) in the correct order - if even possible - for each individual file.

The only other suggestion I can offer is to contact all your friends and relatives who might have copies of these or other images and ask them to send them to you.

Obviously, with hindsight being 20/20, the moral of the story is, have multiple viable backups of your important files and keep at least one backup in an "off-site" location. This might be "the cloud" or a trusted neighbor's or relative's house. I keep a backup in my safe deposit box at my bank.

Remember, ALL DRIVES WILL FAIL - eventually, sooner or later.