I have a usb external hard drive. I went to turn it on the other day and when I did the power and hard drive working light just flashed on for a second and the hard drive didn't do anything. I noticed the activity light on the the external drive's power cord started flickering when I tried to power on the hard drive. I then took the drive out of it's enclosure and plugged it in to my computer as the slave drive. When I powered on the computer the hard drive made a popping noise and then started to smoke. I then plugged it in to the secondary IDE channel as master (by itself). When the POST screen came on the computer recognized the hard drive location on the IDE channel and the model number of the drive, but then gave me a hard drive fail message. I don't know why this would happen (the burning and popping part) but I have essential stuff I need from that drive. Is there anyway to get my stuff from this drive?

Many years ago, and far away, I had a drive which ejected all the factory intalled smoke. This is a serious problem, because, usually, when a major component fails in this manner, not only does it no longer operate, but it releases toxic smoke, a US federal violation of EPA regulations. Obtaining, possessing, manufacturing, or trying to reinstall this smoke is a smoke punishable in serious terms. So, I went on ebay and found an identical model drive, and swapped the electronics board. Whether you can do that on modern drives remains to be seen.

If a drive is smoking, popping, burning up, etc. why would you plug it in somewhere else?

I think the smoke eminated from the controller board on the hard drive. The smoke came immediatly after the popping sound and came from out of both sides underneath the drive. I was thinking is was only the controller board and not from inside the drive itself. Thus hoping to replace the board and get it working. "If a drive is smoking, popping, burning up, etc. why would you plug it in somewhere else?" It was a frantic, desperate move. Actually if I would have left the drive plugged in any longer as it was smoking, it probably would have kept burning. When I unplugged it and tried it on the other IDE cable, there was no more smoke, only a drive fail message. What I don't understand is why when it was in the external enclosure, that it didn't pop and burn. It just didn't work. It only started to burn after I plugged it into my computer directly.

There are companies that will try to retrieve your data. I think i costs $100-$150 US just to see if they can. Then more moolah to get the data. 98% of the population is asleep. The other 2% are staring around in complete amazement, abject terror, or both.

I looked into data retrieval and it is oddly expensive. I really hoped I could just buy a duplicate drive and swap the controller cards, but I'm not even sure that is what was burning. Although a pop and smoke is usually a sign of a short.

I unscrewed the controller card. It is swappable with another of the same style card. Do I need the same model and size of drive or can I use the same model and different size? I have noticed that the code on same model, different sized drives is the same. This leads me to believe that I could use a card from same model, different size.