when doing some maintainance on my computer it was switched on and i foolishly dropped a screw onto the circuit board of my hard drive (Maxtor 6B200P0 Diamondmax 10 200Gb 7200rpm ATA133 8mb Cache - OEM). it no longer spins or is recognised by the computer.

a friend seems to think i would of short circuited it and i would require a replacment circuit board. is this the case or have i lost all my data without paying several hundred pounds for a company to get it back???

anyones expert opinion would be great!

thanks

I've seen drives become non-responsive due to touching the disk controller board on the bottom of the drive. After a short while, the static charge disipates and the drive "comes back".

If you're really lucky, the screw didn't cause a direct short which fried a circuit. Let the drive rest for a few hours or over night and try it again.

Also run MAXTOR's drive diagnostics on the drive. These tools generally read the drive directly, bypassing the bios. This will give you an indication of the drives health.

thanks for the info dan. i cant run the maxtor test as the computer is not connected to the internet. ive tried pluggin the drive back in again but sadly no joy. is it possible to replace the board if the case is that ive shorted the baord???

The MAXTOR downloads are files which you run to create the diagnostic tools disk on one of your floppy disks. Download, put a floppy in the drive, then run the downloaded file. The floppy can be created on any machine. Then boot the troubled machine with the floppy.

The controller board on the hard disk can indeed be replaced. You just need an exact duplicate and a gentle, static free touch. ;>) I would run the diagnostics first though.

just realised that i could download it. thing is... i dont have a floppy drive on my other computer. i just tried using a CDRW but no luck. looks like i'll have to invest in another identical drive but atleast thats better than spending £200 - £300 as i was qouted to recover the data.

thanks for the help dan

And the moral of the story is "never mess about with the insides of your PC while it's switched on"!

Fortunately, expensive or time-consuming mistakes like this are the ones we definitely learn from - you might do it once but I'll bet you'll never do it again!

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