[Cialug] Death of a Hard Drive...

[jrnosee]

So, my church is in bad shape.  Looks like the PC they used to host their
website must have taken a lightning strike or something.

Power Supply - Dead
Motherboard - Post codes indicate dead
CPU & RAM - ?
HDD... oh the hard drive...

It's a WD800 SATA drive.  I took it out and attempted to plug it into my USB
SATA adapter.  Immediately upon plugging the adapter in to my computer's USB
(with the drive powered on and the SATA plugged in) my computer speakers
started making noise...and not the USB device detected one either.  Just
hissing.  I unplugged the drive from the adapter and plugged it into USB
stand-alone.  The computer recognized it...no hiss.  Plugged sata back in
and the computer lost the USB device.

I'm assuming at this point the drive's controller is shot.  The drive spins
up on power on so I don't think it's mechanically bad.

Has anyone ever done a drive controller board transplant?  It seems fairly
straightforward, but I don't know what I need to look at to even try to get
the same board.  Another WD800?  Specific model (WD800XX-XXXXXX or whatever
it is), controller board model and revision...?????

Please help.  They (and this is partially my fault) never got backups set up
and we really need to recover this drive.

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks.
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