Jay wrote

Ok, updates:

I opened the enclosure and checked inside. There was no blown
out fuses or infact nothing remotely resembling a damaged part.

There isnt usually anything visible when its a reversed supply that
has killed a device. Not always tho, I have seen an optical drive
produce smoke when some eejut rammed a conventional molex
power connector on backwards with an internal drive.

As Ive been thinking, the lights are lit when the power source is
plugged, and the supply for the lights are after the voltage regulator.

Sure, but that doesnt mean that the electronics isnt dead.
You can get a situation where the leds are fine since they dont care
about a reversed voltage, but what is driving them has got fried.

So i'm thinking something bad has happened to the drive it self.

Yeah, that's quite likely given that some of the external
cases dont even attempt to regulate the main supply to
the drive, so it gets 12V reversed if you have the head
reversed on the external power pack.

It isnt hard to design the 5V regulator so that
it doesnt die when its input 12V is reversed.

I didnt get a chance to test whether the supply
goes to the motor or not, which i will do today.

Also I'll check whether the drive works when I connect
it to a PC, else I guess I'm screwed big time (((

Yeah, could well be.

oh btw, the error in the device manager
says Code 10- the device cannot be started.

Yeah, but it isnt clear if that means the
drive cant be started or the bridge is fried.

I run a Win Xp SP2 machine and I tried again by
updating it with latest USB 2.0 drivers, no luck!!

Yeah, I wouldnt have expected that to make any difference.

Professional data recovery is $100 a gig ((

Not always, http://www.retrodata.co.uk/
Worth the hassle if the alternative is attempting it yourself
because the in country recovery is too expensive to contemplate.