I've been watching the drive repair process and have learned quite a bit but not quite enough!  

I went out and purchased a few things to troubleshoot the issues I'm having with 2 drives.  I already have soldering irons but I also picked up a thermal camera (Topdon) and a pretty kick ass microscope (Andonstar), and a Fluke 117 multimeter.  I've been fooling around on test components (not my drives!) to see if I could figure out what's going on.

I'm pretty sure the issue with both drives is that they overheated and failed.  I tried to figure out what might be wrong but, to my untrained eyes, I can't tell.  I looked under the microscope for anything that looked out of the ordinary but zippo.  Here is a comparison photo of my drive with and without the thermal camera.  I can supply additional photo's if that would help.

Before I send both drives in for repair, I would like to try to tackle this myself.  I have no problem paying to get my data back but I'd also like to see if I can learn something.

Thanks in advance!