Anyone locally who recovers hard drives?

[Tunebug]

SUCCESS!!!!  

I bought a similar hard drive and it arrived today.   Both of the were western digital model WD800BB's, but the exact model numbers were a little different (WD800BB-XXXXX and WD800BB-YYYYYY).  I didn't do anything as far as worrying about firmware levels or anything.  I swapped out the board on the old drive, put her back in my trusty old mac, and bingo...she booted up just fine.   It was great to have her back.  Thanks to all who offered their advice.  The only bad thing is that I looked on ebay for a circuit board to buy so I could have 2 working drives, and the only ones I found cost as much as I paid for the drive.  Oh well, no big deal I guess.  At least I got my stuff all back.  Now I need to fix my backups so that I don't have this problem again...but that's another story.

[markd]

Glad to hear that it worked out for you.  Given the situation though, I'd recommend that you get your needed data off that old drive, swap controller boards back and use the *new* drive.  You really don't know what the state of that old drive is.  When doing what you did, I always consider it a blessing and get data while I can.  That old drive should not be used as a current drive.  Chalk it up as a loss once you get your data off.  You got lucky, don't push that luck