Fried motherboard by carelessness...

[TroutKind]

Here's the scoop. I recently went to clean out my computer and decided to take out the RAM. After cleaning the slots out I put the RAM back in, so I thought. I went to power back up and a blank screen appeared, then I started to smell something frying. After powering down I realized one side of a RAM stick wasn't all the way set!!!! I knew I was F$*ed then. After further inspection, I noticed a chip on the MOBO was also fried.
My question is, is it possible to have lost the data on my HDD's?
I have already put in an order for a new MOBO, processor and RAM, I am aware my video card could be out also, but thought I would try those 3 things first and hope for the best. It's my data I'm worried about.
It was time for an upgrade anyways!

[Thong_Ispector]

My first guess is that your Hard Drive data is ok.
With the blown MB and ram it probably never even got past the self test routine.

If you have a second drive you can use as a master and set your old drive up as a slave I would try that first just to recover your data. If you have it as a master and access the os it will write data even if just temp files to it.

If your drive is blown it would just be the controller and the data on the platters would still be ok if you had another board to stick in the hard drive.