Hard disk fried

recently i had a power surge in my system and took it to a tech to have fix and he told me that the motherboard, memory, PSU and the processor were fried so he order new part, ok! I got a phone call today to say that he replaced everything powered it up and.......both harddrives do not work, is there anyway that i can retreve the data that was on those drives?

The real question is do the hard drives power up. If not, it maybe near to impossible or very difficult to retrieve any data.

From years of practical knowhow , in most cases , the memmory should have been still ok .

The powersupply may still have been servicable as most have a protective fuse built in unit .

As for the hard drives , I have yet to see these die from a powersurge .

Things that get replaced in such event .

Mainboard
Cpu
Optical drives

Others - service check prior
Psu
Ram
Hard drives

Suspect components - addin cards
Video (may work , but glitches)
Audio (annoying pop's , whistle type noise's , no working mic jacks , ect)
Modem (inconsistent connection test's)
Usb (never test , may damage test system)
Firewire (same)
Video capture other (test)

As for the issue of the hard drives recovery , they should be tested on another system , cable swap .

Some drives can be a pain like western digitals which seem to have a bad habit of not working if set to master , so always before testing and connecting , set them to CS , if the drive is still alive , the bios will pick it up .

If after several tests have failed to recover the drives , you can try the expensive data recovery services , or put a wanted add in ebay for each model drive , and request matching drives , working , but with bad sectors , but in sound operational condition , you'll get them cheap .

Once drive is received , it is tested for bootup worthyness ,

This is what I do for recovery .

You disassemble your drive , removing platers carefully .
You do the same to replacement drive , remove its platers , and exchange your's in their place , and reassemble unit carefully , paying attention to detail .

From here , the drive should be back to normal , use as is , or recover data , the wipe it clean , and sell it to recover funds ...

I just rebiult my 80gig western digital by buying a used unit with bad sectors , and this drive is now my data backup reserve unit ...

Thats why I havent done any guides for a while , it was all on the buggered drive ...

Bjs this is very helpful is it quite easy for, lets say an intermediate person to do?

The drives are 80gb western digitals can't exact models but i know 1 was ab and the other bb (not sure if that matters).

Jst to let you know the system has been refurbished completly do to this so called surge, memory, motherboard, processor and PSU all replaced!

EDIT: The Drive are Western Digital WD800 AB and WD800 BB

Would anybody be able to give me full instructions on how to actually compete this process,

Basically i would be looking to recover as much of the data as possible

Originally Posted by Bjs

From years of practical knowhow , in most cases , the memmory should have been still ok .

The powersupply may still have been servicable as most have a protective fuse built in unit .

As for the hard drives , I have yet to see these die from a powersurge .

Things that get replaced in such event .

Mainboard
Cpu
Optical drives

Others - service check prior
Psu
Ram
Hard drives

Suspect components - addin cards
Video (may work , but glitches)
Audio (annoying pop's , whistle type noise's , no working mic jacks , ect)
Modem (inconsistent connection test's)
Usb (never test , may damage test system)
Firewire (same)
Video capture other (test)

As for the issue of the hard drives recovery , they should be tested on another system , cable swap .

Some drives can be a pain like western digitals which seem to have a bad habit of not working if set to master , so always before testing and connecting , set them to CS , if the drive is still alive , the bios will pick it up .

If after several tests have failed to recover the drives , you can try the expensive data recovery services , or put a wanted add in ebay for each model drive , and request matching drives , working , but with bad sectors , but in sound operational condition , you'll get them cheap .

Once drive is received , it is tested for bootup worthyness ,

This is what I do for recovery .

You disassemble your drive , removing platers carefully .
You do the same to replacement drive , remove its platers , and exchange your's in their place , and reassemble unit carefully , paying attention to detail .

From here , the drive should be back to normal , use as is , or recover data , the wipe it clean , and sell it to recover funds ...

I just rebiult my 80gig western digital by buying a used unit with bad sectors , and this drive is now my data backup reserve unit ...

Thats why I havent done any guides for a while , it was all on the buggered drive ...

Lucky you, I work in a Computer store and we have seen the power supply fail (cheapo brand) and fry everything different chips on the varuious parts actually got so hot they bubbled their exterior. In the two cases I can remember where that happened nothing was salvable... Even the hardf drives had burnt up chips. The memory was burnt up visibly. My suspicion was that the diodes in the PS that turn the HF AC into DC shorted and sent Ac throughout the computer. Just a guess as I didn't bother to verify what happened. Both computers it was the same brand of PS. One was my brothers and I had to find another compabale tape drive to recover his backups, Can you believe it? He was still using a Colorado 250Mb tape drive last year. That was why I had a hard time finding one, and one that still worked and then the old software.

Cheers

Personally, I get all my old equipment back, plus the equipment he purchased for you and take it to a real tech. In my professional opinion. most power surges fry a MoBo and Proc, but never have I seen one take out the RAM, unless the surge caused a fire. Another point, which someone else has said, all power supplies have a fuse inside. Replacement of the fuse can require either simply pulling the fuse and replacing or if it's soldered in, any tech can remove the fuse and re-solder a new one.

The first thing I'd do is take your hard drive to a friends house and hook it up to their machine. You don't need to hook it up to the IDE/SATA/SCSI cabling only to the power supply. Turn on the machine and I'll bet dimes for donuts you will hear your hard drive "whir" to life.

You may have to replace your video or sound sub-system, but I'll bet those are good too. I've seen power surges cause minor damage to these, but the surges are usually significant. ie. channeled lightning strike

This technician you took it to sounds like a scam artist. Trust me, we have two of them in our town and I get their customers all the time. Nothing makes me happier then to see someone enjoy happy computing at a decent price. This guy sounds like he's trying to bank roll you. Get your equipment away, pay his overpriced parts and labor charges and check out your hard drives to prove my point. Once you do that, visit another technician or find a friend who understands hardware to help you buy any components you "really" need to replace.

Originally Posted by Squid_uk

recently i had a power surge in my system and took it to a tech to have fix and he told me that the motherboard, memory, PSU and the processor were fried so he order new part, ok! I got a phone call today to say that he replaced everything powered it up and.......both harddrives do not work, is there anyway that i can retreve the data that was on those drives?

That's a technician

He should have done what we do as a matter of routine before we order any parts and/or call the customer. We in this case would have tested every part for function before ever calling you. Once we had determined what parts were and were not working. In this case assuming he is right with regards to what parts are fried we would have advised you to give it a decent burial, charged you $45 for diagnostics despite having spent a couple of hours testing every part. How can you charge someone more than that for telling them everything is dead?

Then we would have suggested that you buy a new computer, preferabbly from us, or Dell or HP, not e-machine or some $299 special. We get most of our customers from word of mouth and the rest from the phone book advert and sign out front. Most of our customers are repeat.

Anyway that's what we would have done, But water under the bridge.

I'd want my old replaced parts back too... Note we always offer them back.
Any ethical repair shop should, excluding auto repair where they may have a core charge you probably wouldn't want to pay.

Good Luck.

ROF, lets not say scam artist, just not thorough. He should have tested every part before calling the customer. Testing every part is the only way to determine if it is worth fixing. In this case it doesn';t sound worth fixing, If I were the OP I'd want a second opinion in this case.

Word of mouth works both ways, people both suggest going to somewhere for repair or say stay away from Joe blow computer repair they're expensive and poor quality etc.

Cheers

BTW I've seen hard drives where one or more of the chips are burned up, and I've also seen where they're shorted and keep the unit from turning on.

It can happen, Happened to my brother and his old Cyrix 233 based win98 system. I fixed him up with mostly used parts and a cheap (cause he's cheap) MB with built in processor. He only surfs the net with it, reads news.. his old cyrix was even fast enough til the PS blew and fried everything.

i had a company in Ireland look at the drives and they said that the main chip had gone on the 1st drive and the motor on the other

Well in that case you could get your data back. It sounds like a job for a company with a clean room in their facility.

Here in the USA we use Ontrack. Given where you are maybe

http://www.ontrack.co.uk/

They are not cheap, last quote was $1800 for a 20GB WDC drive. OTOH they have never let us down.

Good Luck