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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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 free way of salvaging it? I'm willing to roll the dice.

 

[lvnhwood]

That means removing the green circuit board and getting picture of other side.

okay. i don't have the tools to do that but i will ask the guy from marketplace if he will come by and do it. would you be willing to work on it if i send it to you? i can't pay for the recovery shops and i need it badly, there is a lot of my first student films on there and tons of my first songs and stuff.

 

[lvnhwood]

That means removing the green circuit board and getting picture of other side.

the guy from marketplace said i should replace the board and need someone to swap the bios chip to the replacement board to be able to read the drive.

 

[COLGeek]

okay. i don't have the tools to do that but i will ask the guy from marketplace if he will come by and do it. would you be willing to work on it if i send it to you? i can't pay for the recovery shops and i need it badly, there is a lot of my first student films on there and tons of my first songs and stuff.

No, I won't work on your HDD. Sorry.

 

[COLGeek]

Member @fzabkar was a great deal of experience resolving these sorts of matters.

He can correct me if I am wrong. Swapping the PCB is one option, but it needs to be the same PCB revision as what you have now.

There are also some other steps that may be used to bypass the problem on your current PCB, that is why the picture was requested.

Last, it is entirely possible that none of these "fixes" will give you access to the files when it is said and done.

 

[fzabkar]

the guy from marketplace said i should replace the board and need someone to swap the bios chip to the replacement board to be able to read the drive.

yes thats right or u cld read my tvs faq