Is there a way to retrieve data from a HDD that went up?

Went up in flames?purpleRz

no broke. I'm assuming that it wont turn on or something

Is the drive a mass storage drive (ie not the drive with your OS on it)? Does the drive still show up under device manager?

If yes, you can use a program such as R-Studio to scan the HD and recover any files that are still readable.

if it's just the circuitry then just buying the same drive and slapping in the board should maake it work, though it has to be the exact same type to be sure

if it's just the PC use it in another PC but boot from another

if it's completely bust there are companies that can fix them but they're really for bussinesses to use,

if you want to avoid this in the future set up a RAID 1 array to copy all data to a second drive incase one fails

Depending on what's wrong with the drive it can be very expensive. If a mechanical part in the drive has failed basically the only way is to send it to a data recovery center where they take it apart in an anti static room and **** but it is very expensive.

Maybe switching the board like someone mentioned will work, but better hope nothing has changed over the revisions. A old drive vs a new one even same model # could have way different parts, i.e. voltage regulators, transistors, etc.. that operate at different voltages.

Basically unless the data is critical and can keep you out of jail for 5 years or something consider it gone.

Also like mentioned above a raid 1 is good to prevent data loss, but you still want to have a regular backup onto like CD-Rs, dvds, usb hard drive, etc.. A raid 1 will help prevent data loss for physical failure.

However a raid 1 will not prevent data loss due to software. If some weird software crash causes data loss; in a raid 1 setup you end up with the same weird software data loss on all drives.

So for critical data its best to do both.