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I have a Samsung G3 Station 2TB external hard drive (link to PDF specs here). It was working perfectly when I accidentally plugged it in my notebook's power source. Now, it doesn't work even with the correct power source. The indicating led, which previous to this accident blinked when the HD was accessed now blinks ininterruptly.

The notebook's power source is 19V/3.42A. The hard drive's is 12V/2A and I know that, inside its case, there is regular 2TB SATA drive, along with some sort of adapter.

Does this adapter has some kind of power protection? I opened the case and the hard drive board smells bad. The adapter's does not. Is my data forever lost or can I replace its board?

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  • Does it not work now with the correct power source?
    – Amicable
    Commented Apr 12, 2012 at 16:17
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    Try putting the hard drive into your computer internally and see if it's seen by bios/os
    – Rob
    Commented Apr 12, 2012 at 16:28
  • The power input of the enclosure goes to two places: 1) the 12v SATA power input, and 2) a DC-to-DC converter to derive the 5 volts for the USB-to-SATA adapter and the 5v SATA power input. The DC-to-DC converter and the HDD spindle motor are the most likely components to be damaged with 50% overvoltage. If the converter passed the overvoltage downstream to the logic boards, then both the USB adapter and the HDD controller boards get fried.
    – sawdust
    Commented Apr 12, 2012 at 20:10

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There is no power protection mentioned in the specifications.

If you have damaged the hard drive the actually physical disk will not have been affected by a power surge, so you'll be able to have the data recovered.

You would have to pay someone to do this for you. As if they are unable to connect through the ports, they'll need to use specialist equipment. They remove the platters inside the hard drive have to be taken apart in a clean environment and read with special equipment.

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  • It's possible that the sata <---> usb adapter it would've been plugged into is fried, but not the hard drive itself.
    – Rob
    Commented Apr 12, 2012 at 16:27
  • The adapter does not smell bad. The hard drive PCB does, unfortunately.
    – Cacovsky
    Commented Apr 12, 2012 at 21:27
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Does my data is forever lost or

This, or some equivalent accident, will happen again. I'd make a note to do backups in future.

can I replace its board?

You can often replace the circuit board on a hard drive. Sometimes people buy an identical drive, swap the circuit boards, then recover their data. As others have suggested, separate the drive from any enclosure and any USB circuitry in the enclosure. The board we are discussing is the one that forms the bottom surface of the drive itself.

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