So, say someone accidentally reverses the power supply to a hard drive...

[jobycom]

You know, like if that someone had a laptop fail and leave his (or her, it could be her) disk drive with hundreds of recent pictures and music files kind of hung up with an unbootable boot file, and so that someone bought an "IDE to USB" cable with a power supply cable, and while trying to hook the hard drive to said cable suddenly realized with a sort of sick feeling that he (or maybe she) had yanked the power supply leads off and in a rush put the black on the red and the red on the black (remember, it's a laptop drive, so the power is routed through the same connectors as the data, or roughly, rather than through a separate plug) and that the drive no longer seemed to operate, what exactly would that do to the drive?

I'm wondering if such a thing, which could very well be a hypothetical situation and therefore no excuse to rib the poster over it, would fry the data on the drive, or the motor, or just the firmware? Or would it do nothing, meaning that the whole drive may have been shot in the first place?

This possibly hypothetical person may be wondering if he (or she) could simply replace the circuit board on the drive, thus replacing the chip that controls the motor, or if he or possibly she has to shell out big bucks for data recovery, or if we are all well beyond any possible (hypothetically) happy outcome?

So, am I hosed, and how bad?

(In self defense, the IDE to USB cable was defective, which caused much of the experimentation that lead to the mistake...)

[trotsky]

1. In such a hypothetical situation...

the ONE thing that wouldn't be affected is the data on the drive. I don't know for certain if the motor & circuitry would be protected by a diode or something to prevent this very thing. (Lots of computer parts are resilient this way. I can't tell you how many 3.5" drives I've had to flip the connector back and forth on to figure out the correct orientation, with no harm done. (Of course, the main power isn't coming through there!)

If the drive is hooked up correctly now, does it spin up? That would seem to indicate the motor and basic circuitry are OK.

And if it is ruined, your best bet is just to go with the data recovery. Replacing the parts necessary to bring the drive back to life is the first thing a data recovery service would do anyway.

[jayfish]

2. Agreed. If The Person Who Made This Mistake...

(wink wink) can find and identical drive on Ebay or something, he/she may just be able to swap out the IDE logic board. Would cost less to try that and fail than to go straight to a data recovery house.

Jay

[jobycom]

3. That's theoretically what this hypothetical person might well consider

doing n such a situation... (ahem).

Thanks. :-)

[RoyGBiv]

4. One note ...

Theoretically, this hypothetical person needs to make sure when s/he is looking for an identical drive, that the drive is truly identical. Small revisions can result in different logic boards that aren't compatible with the old version. The drives look the same, are marketed the same, and for most intents and purposes are the same, except for something like this.

In theory, one could e-mail or call a hypothetical, prospective supplier of an identical drive and try to match revision numbers prior to purchase.

[jobycom]

6. Thanks. This person hadn't thought that point out, so the advice

is well-received. Hypothetically.

[jobycom]

5. No spinning, no life. I've flipped... I mean, this person probably flipped

many IDE cables on 3.5 inch drives with no harm, but this was a different set-up. The cable was USB powered, but had an additional power source, and that's the source I, um, this person, seems to have reversed. Before that, the disk spun and tried to boot, getting all the way to the "Would you like to start up in Safe Mode screen," and after the flip, the computer would not even believe there was a hard drive present.

Thanks for the help. I'm going to try picking one up on EBAY and switching boards, before going to a recovery expert. I figure if it's not the board, then changing the board won't hurt anything, and if it is the board, changing it shouldn't hurt it, either. It wasn't making any disturbing noises before, all the problems seemed to be software related.

[trotsky]

7. Well, good luck to y... I mean this person you know.

And if they do need to end up looking for data recovery, I can highly recommend these folks from past experience:

http://www.ontrack.com/index.aspx