Western Digital Drive toast, need help switching controllers

[MaDSkillZ]

I have 6 WD drives ranging in different sizes. One of them just decides to die on me. I tried it in 2 different computers and it comes up in XP that the drive needs formatted. I ran the WD drive utility and it says i need to send it back. But i have 600 music videos on the drive and I really want to get it back. A guy told me to swap controllers on the drive and see if that works. I have another exact same drive here im not even using so i need some info on how exactly to go about it. The drive is a WD800BB.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Snickle]

Did you try fdisk to see if any partition/s still exist? If fdisk reports none, then any data on it is already gone.

Changing the interface board on the drive is tricky, several fine wires and/or ribbon conductors between the printed circuit board and internal workings. Don't open the drive case, it is assembled in a 'clean room' to prevent contamination of the parts. To see an example, take apart an old drive no longer needed.

Sending the drive to companies like

http://www.ontrack.com

for data recovery works but the cost can be a bit steep, but it depends on how badly the data is needed.