Question dead external hard drive - need help cheap or free

[lvnhwood]

I have a 15 year old seagate external drive, the one that powers up on a dock station

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9tn158-578

It's completely dead. I had a guy connect some cables to try to get a read and nothing. I can not afford data recovery. There are some old student films on there that I desperately need to recover. Can anyone suggest a pirate way of salvaging it? I'm willing to roll the dice.

 

[fzabkar]

Did your guy use the wrong AC adaptor? Can you hear even the slightest sound from the drive?

Remove the drive and connect it to a SATA port on your computer's motherboard. If it still doesn't spin up, remove the HDD PCB and upload a photo of the component side.

 

[punkncat]

Wow, 15 years out of an external drive is well beyond projected life span. Things like this are why we push so hard for data backups, but putting your nose in it isn't helpful at the point. (moving forward though...)

Almost embarrassed to say that I have had luck a time or two by putting a HDD in the freezer with a long enough cable to reach out to a laptop. Don't take it out, just leave it in there and see if you get a response. Keep in mind that after you remove it from the freezer to let it sit on a desk for a while to allow it to return to normal temps and for the condensation to evaporate.