I work in the computer industry and PSU makes far more sense in this case
(to me at least)
namley I didn't even know the acronym SMPS. whenever you buy a power supply
for a computer you buy a "PSU". it mught be a switch mode PSU but the
category is always either power supply or PSU. Thats the common term from
AMD to Zilog (well ok probbably not Zilog anymore (or ever) but hey it
sounded cool) in their data books. computer goes boom, use computer terms?

Anyway
to answer the origional question somewhat.
the data recovery places price range is generally from like (Australian $
here btw) 900 to however much you got (say 15-30k). depending on how far the
spike got through the drive and what the heads were doint at the time. Worst
case the heads were somewhere near your FAT (dammit i hate that acronym)
leaving your data intact but wiping out where it is on the drive itself. The
data can still sometimes be recovered but it's extremly labour intensive and
hence expensive. if you are lucky it just fried the board and the heads etc
are ok and they will just replace the board as has been said. its also
possible the spike got through to the heads which would have fried them (and
possibly messed up the platter (exploding copper is bad mmmmk) a little) and
you will almost deffinatly have lost some data, with luck it wont be data
you want ;->

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Kunz" <montana@FAST.NET>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: How robust is a HDD?


> I know that; my point is that PSU is far less clear than SMPS.
>
> I work in the power supply industry (www.tdipower.com) and our products
are
> all SPS-nnnn where SPS is Switching Power Supply.  Until I came to this
> company SPS meant nothing to me.
>
> Our sales literature refers to them as Power Supplies or SMPS, but never
PSU.
>
> Andy
>
>
> At 09:09 PM 1/22/03 -0500, you wrote:
> >Power Supply Unit
> >Quoting Andy Kunz <montana@FAST.NET>:
> >
> >> >Not exploded but failed, yes.  And I refer to them as PSU's so more
people
> >> >will understand what I'm talking about.
> >>
> >> SMPS I understand, but why did you bring Penn State into this?
> >>
> >> Andy
> >>
> >> --
> >> http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic:
> >> [PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >----------------------------------------
> >This mail sent through www.mywaterloo.ca
> >
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