Oh geez, Norm, I am so sorry. Sorry that you lost the drives, but so much more sorry that you lost the keepsake videos from Egypt.

Zen hugs.

I don't really understand iDVD/iMovie/iOtherWonkyVideoTools so getting the footage off the MiniDV tapes is pretty much a complete recovery. Whew!

Now, I really do need to learn enough about those tools to make a DVD...

Norm, I hate to hear of this fry job, and am so glad you've got the originals to go back to. But I don't see one essential lesson there in your list. As an old lab hand, I can tell you that the lesson is

5. Check everything. Don't assume.

In this case, "everything" means all power connections. You never assume that you know what is on any wire until you measure it.

Best of luck in getting everything back together right!

Just because you fried the drive doesn't mean the ones and zeros have disappeared from the disk. Send it to a data recovery specialist.

I've hard nearly exactly the same experience. I was unpacking my two external hard drives after moving, and didn't pay close enough attention to which power brick was supposed to be used with which drive. Luckily only plugged in one before noticing that something was wrong, and the dataloss wasn't catastrophic... but it still ruined my day.

If the video from egypt is really worth saving, think about buying the exact same hard drive as the fried one. There is a minute possibility of replacing the actual board electronics from one drive to the other.

Note that you should have a "clean" room if cracking a drive open, however as long as you do not touch the platters or head/head armatures and are in a relatively clean room (eg you have not had a cigarette in there) you *may* get away with it, bearing in mind the objective is to save the data, not the drives (eg be prepared to have two buggered drives, not just one).

If I were desperate I would do it. Also if it really is that important there are companies out there that can recover data - remember that it is unlikely the actual data on the disk is gone for good, just the "drive" (meaning the controller and associated electronics).

Here's a tip - buy a label printer. I label all my power bricks. I know, it won't fix the fried drives, but it could help in the future. You can even use labels on wires before you accidentally hook them up to the wrong pins. Funny thing, wiring that is not intended for "end users" is usually not color coded. I guess someone was going for job security.