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<7_310381_a6920df77e992e799c329e94ce1e1a6a@hardwar eforumz.com> Captin
<UseLinkToEmail@HardwareForumz.com> wrote:

>One is either no power or the short circuiting of power.
>Call me slow but I usually check this out first because without it
>even my brother who is a software junky is going nowhere if the drive
>is installed inside a PC without it.I would say that almost 50% of
>general failures belong here and the easy answer is to replace the
>controller board even if it is tempory to regain your data.

Sure, but you need a compatible controller board.

That typically means a sacrificial hard drive of the same make and
model, and sometimes even from the same or similar lot number, which
puts the cost of recovery above what most end users are willing to spend
to recover their data, even if a suitable sacrificial drive can be
found. Plus you have to add in the tech's time.

I've done it for my own drives, but I tend to purchase drives in batches
and I keep a spare drive or two around and put them in RAID
configurations (in some cases I use all the drives, but only in RAID-1
arrays, I always try to keep a cold-spare or a hot-spare for RAID-5
arrays)

I've had cases where I've had to pull a working drive from a RAID-1
array to recover data from an identical drive which wasn't in a RAID
array and I needed something more recent then my backup. It sucks, but
if I can do it (I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy, although I have
some background in hardware), any "average PC tech" can do it.

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