My harddrive just died. I heard the death sound of the click, click, and the harddrive spin down.

Not to worry, there was nothing important that I cannot replace on the harddrive.
What is sad is that harddrive was the largest harddrive I had 124GB of space.
I basically used it to store ripped movies and downloaded TV shows.

Now that I no longer have that harddrive for storage space, I need another.
Fine. I have another harddrive that has 147GB of space, one of those new SATA drives. Sometime in transit while moving last month, the pins on the SATA harddrive became bent and a few torn off the drive itself.
Basically, I seem to be un-able to access the contents of the harddrive.

Now, my questions, finally.
1. When a harddrive is dead, what exactly is not working: the platters and bearings stop (spinning), the logic board is no longer functional, or the connexion between the logic board and the platters discs non-functional?
2. If only the platters and bearings stop working, then can I extract the platters from the SATA harddrive and transplant to replace the platters of the dead harddrive?

I'd be glad for all the answers...

most of the time the logic board dies, but chances are, that the pins were disconected due to some shock. But beware that it is nearly impossible to open it and then repair it, because small particles of dust stick on the disks, and the disks cannot be readed anymore

I also have a problem kinda the same.....i knew this girl who was selling me 250gig HD's for $50.........so i bought a bunch of them......now when i got to the last one,which i was keeping for myself....it didnt work at all.....i plug it in and turn on the pc,and its not getting any power.......so if anyone has any ideas,it would be great......because i really dont want to just throw away a 250gig HD

Well as far as reviving the dead hard-drive, if you are still having the hard time letting it go try this trick http://www.trap17.com/forums/index.php?sho...ndpost&p=175254 or stick it inside your freezer for about 1 hour for 15 minutes of operation time. If that doesn't work, SOL. Let it go guys...it's dead. "Go towards the light!"

There's a reason why people in the commercials wear that weird space suit when assembling micro-computer parts. It is because any amount of foreign object (as mall as a size of a dust) will kill that hard-drive from functioning. As it was stated in one of the previous responses.

Ask yourself this--is it worth it? Is it worth wasting your time trying to fix, perhaps buying a special tools to get that hard-drive open...and find out later that it did nothing good? If you want to just open it up to see what's inside, then go right ahead. But as far as my past experiences go, opening up hard-drives isn't worth unless you want a very large paper weight.

For your condition, software that suppose to help would not help now.
I suggest bringing your harddisk to a professional repair center to get your data out and tranfer to another new drive. Your current drive may due to a motor failure or something related.

Unless you want to give up your data, repair it.

When a hdd dies from the inside there is nothing you can do. If you open up the case, which you cannot anyways, dust will instantly get in and render it inoperable.

If the pins or the ROM and circuitry dies you can get it replaced, but truthfully it would be easier to get a new drive since they will probably charge you a new hdd price for replacing the board, you can keep your data that is already on the drive though.

Two months ago I tried to do what you're asking about. I lost my hard drive, so I bought another used hard drive and swapped the platters. Simple enough, but the disk wouldn't read. Surprisingly, it's true. Opening it up ruins it. When I reswapped the platters and tried to install the newer drive, it didn't work either. I assumed people were exaggerating when they say a speck of dust would ruin a drive, but it seems to be true. Don't open it!