Well, my notebook drive bit the dust. I suppose video encoding, watching a movie, with 96 tabs in firefox and 23 tabs in IE, on a hot summer's night on a black leather seat was too much heat to handle. Lappy froze, BSOD, reboot to "no device found". Removed drive and tried in another machine while holding it -- no vibration or sounds from poweron/spinup. Does this mean that the failure is likely electrical (on the PCB board)? If it was something with the heads or platters, wouldn't I feel or hear some type of vibration? How can I be sure if it's the PCB board without taking it in to a professional? I'm thinking that I can switch the PCB board with my brother's identical notebook drive to get my data off.
Hi, welcome to HWF. If I were you, I'd try to identify the failing component on the PCB, since the possibility that every component on the board failed is slim. Plus, you'd be sacrificing your brothers HDD to (maybe, perhaps) have a shot at saving yours... doesn't seem worth the gamble, really. But if it's one shot resister or a melted solder path or something relatively simple like that, you might be able to fix it well enough to get your data off.
Could that really damage my brother's PCB board? How? Also, how would I find out what failed on the PCB board?
Removing it means you'll have to take it apart to some extent, also exposing it to breakage, ESD, and weakened solder joints. In other words, by messing with it you void the warranty and also risk breaking it. Sometimes it's obvious; little scorch marks, melted solder, runny rosin, etc. Other times you have to break out a voltmeter or even an oscilloscope to figure it out. That's when you really have to weigh how much that data is worth to you.
