hard drive recovery services?

[mangled]

I have an external Firewire/USB Western Digital 250gb hard drive. Lately, I've been having trouble getting it to mount via firewire as oulintined in this thread.

As you can see in that thread, tonight, a little white smoke came out of the back of the hard drive and while it still gets power, even usb won't work anymore.

since I can't access the drive, I think I need to take it to some data recovery service. I don't think a software recovery solution will work on my own.

Here's the drive. Any suggestions for places to have it serviced? I'm in the Los Angeles area if anyone knows of a local place. Thanks.

 

[mchammer]

Why not try and take it out of the enclosure and hook it up to the inside of the computer directly, maybe just the enclosure is bad? Data recovery service=$$$

 

[mangled]

I thought about that too...it looks like a regular hard drive in an external enclosure. Just not sure if it has standard connectors on the back of the drive. I'm sure the data is most likely fine, it's probably the usb and firewire connectors that are fried.

 

[mchammer]

Should be standard connectors, just check the jumper settings first. Then get all your data off it and send for a new one if it's under warranty. If it's not under warranty, run the western digital diagnostics on the drive and see if it's ok, if so, you could by a new external drive case and put the drive in it.