This is the story of how I ressurrected my hard drive.

How I fritzed my hard drive
I went away on holidays for 2 weeks, came home, turned on my PC and after about 10 seconds, heard some electrical fizzing. Ack!

I quickly turned off my PC, but being an idiot, thought, "I'll just make sure all the cables are in correctly and try again."

So I do that and hit the power switch. This time I get more buzzing and smoke starts coming out of my power supply. Nice one!

Ok, so I go and buy a new power supply. No worries. Get it home, replace the fritzed one. Turn on the PC.

Hmmm, something's wrong. Something's dead wrong. My main Seagate 80gig hard drive is not being recognised. I put my ear next to the drive - there's no sound - it's not even spinning up.

I try a few things - using a different power connector, different ide connector, etc - all to no avail.

My hard drive is dead. Panic sets in...

Backups? What backups?
Uh, yeah - maybe 3 months ago... 3 months of emails, 3 months of code, 3 months of NeverWinterNights save games...

How to fix a hard disk
So I do some searching on Google. I turn up lots of sketchy info about how other people have fixed hard drives. I even try some of them.

One of my favourites - put the hard drive in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer - cooling it down shrinks the parts and may enable the drive to spin up properly. I actually try this and get lots of funny looks from my wife. Still, it doesn't work.

I look at some businesses that do hard drive recovery - the prices are exhorbitant! I could buy 2 replacement drives for those prices.

The techy answer to everything - open it up!
So I look at the hard drive - man, I don't even know what type of screws those are! More searching on Google lifts my ignorance - they are Torx screws.

So off I go to the shops to buy a Torx screwdriver set. Dick Smith's has them for 12 bucks. Cool. I get them home and off comes the cover.