this morning i went to turn on my computer (3 year old self build - amd 833 running win xp), nothing happened. i checked the leads and went again, still nothing.

when turned on the power led flickers and dies, but the psu does appear to be at least partially functioning 'cos it feeds the monitor too and that is fine. i cracked it open and had a nose around checking the power leads were in firmly etc, then tried it again, but still nothing.

i really needed to access a piece of work from the hdd that i was working on but had stupidly not backed up, so i removed the hdd and put it in another machine as a slave. on powering up the machine the hdd began to smoke. i immediately cut the power and removed the drive. one of the chips on the circuit board was partially burned. the hdd is a two year old 40gb maxtor d540x (4D040H2) if that helps.

the electrics are the one area that i really have no idea about in computers. i'm guessing what has probably happened is that a recent power cut has meant a surge when the power came back on has fried part of the psu and this in turn has fried the chip on the hdd.

i am desperate to try and recover the data on the disk although paying a specialist ?250 for the priviledge is simply not an option.

does anyone know:

a) what's likely to have happened and what is the best way forward, apart from buying a new psu and hdd and going from there?

b) what are the chances of being able to switch in the circuit board from another hdd exactly the same, in the hope that the disc is undamaged?

cheers
quite

a) Sounds like it could have been a power surge that has caused the problem.
As you say the best solution would be to get another hard drive and replace the PSU for safety sake.

b) If you find another hard drive of exactly the same model then you will be able to take the circuit board off it and put it on the old hard drive.
I used to do this quite often when peoples drives would break down - and I needed to get info off.

The only thing is sometimes it doesn't work and you could damage the board you are putting on.

If you really need the information then I recommend giving it a shot, "its only about 3 screws!"