hard drive repair?

[MadForester]

House struck by lightning, and my Western Digital WD600BB hard drive appears dead. It is no longer
recognized by bios and makes a clicking sound when powered. Data recovery quotes have come in well
over $1,000 dollars. I talked to several different recovery services, and they all were a little
unclear on what they would do to recover the drive, and when I asked specific questions they seemed
to want to avoid answering. It seemed like they were all working from the same script. It's probably
just sales techniques, but I wonder it all they really have to do it replace the circuit board to
get the drive up and running?

Has anyone here had any experience with this? Is it possible I could buy another drive with the
exact same model #, and replace the circuit card myself? Has anyone here done this?

I imagine this is a common question, but I've searched through the newsgroup via google, and I must
be searching for the wrong key words.

thanks,
kevin

 

[MadForester]

heh,
I see lots of similar posts now, I should've just skipped google.

 

[kony]

heh,
I see lots of similar posts now, I should've just skipped google.

No, you'd never get as complete and comprehensive an answer
by only taking a few posts rather than the entire body that
has been written by numerous people. Further, many will not
write as much several times in a row but only briefly hit
the main points.

If a data recovery service told you exactly what they'd do,
they might lose sales. Further, what they do may depend on
what's wrong. If you expect them to tell you how to fix
your drive yourself, that is unrealistic.

You "might" be able to get it working with another circuit
board. If you found a compatible board, I'd think odds are
good given the (suspect) cause. It's no guarantee of
course.

 

[burlev]

I'm having the same problem. What I've been able to glean is that you
need to match key sections of the part number. Then, you are correct
that it should be able to switch out the controller.

Here's the pattern (from the drive I'm looking for by the way
Model number: WD 600BB 32CXAO
Possible matchs: WD xxxxBB xxCXAO

A little more info at:
http://www.evdev.org/wd600dd/