Hard Drive Electronics Fried - Repairable?

[Rocketmagnet]

Hi all,
I recently fried the electronics on my Hard Drive. Can anyone help?

Hard Drive is: Maxtor 120Gb Diamond Plus 9 SATA

The Cause: I had a FDD powered on the same power cable as my HDD. The PCB of the FDD touched the metal of the PC case, causing the HDD to fail. The HDD would no longer spin up, and was not recognised by the BIOS. Looking at the geometry of the accident, I believe that the 0v and 5v lines were shorted together.

Tried So Far: Purchased new HDD of the same model number & swapped the Electronics over. My HDD now spins up, and is recognised by the BIOS, but it will not boot, and FDisk gives "Fixed Disk Error". I don't know if it's the same firmware version.

Before I shell out £100s on recovery, I would like to see if I can get this working myself. I have several years experience doing tricky surface mount soldering assembly and repair. Surely this must be just a case of a single blown component, which can be replaced with one from the new HDD.

Any ideas?

Many thanks

Hugo Elias

 

[paparazi]

Quote:
My HDD now spins up, and is recognised by the BIOS, but it will not boot.
Can it be seen and accessed when connected as a slave on another system? that way valuable data can be saved so you can proceed to low level format or scan disk repair (possible reinstall)
Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[mainegeek]

Rocketmagnet,
Did you re-run auto detection in the bios? The drive that is showing maybe from the old fried logic that is no longer present. Clearing the cmos wouldn't hurt either as it may have become scrambled from the power hit.


"My HDD now spins up, and is recognised by the BIOS, but it will not boot."

What error are you getting at boot? Have you replace the drive cables with new ones? or tried it on the other controller?


FDisk gives "Fixed Disk Error".

Have you tried booting with the OS cd and tried repairing the MBR or tried running the recovery console to repair? The file store may have become scrambled from the hit as well.

IF have critical data on this drive, then it might be wise
to have it recovered by a pro while the drive is still able to spin.

Or if you have a another PC in which you can put this drive in as a secondary then you may have a chance of recoverying the data yourself using GetDataBack by Runtime.I use this often. You have to pay for it though.

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

 

[Rocketmagnet]

paparazi Wrote: Can it be seen and accessed when connected as a slave on another system?

The only other machine I have access to, which can take an SATA drive is my father's. I'm not to keen to put it into his incase something else bad happens.

mainegeek Wrote: Did you re-run auto detection in the bios?

Yes.

mainegeek Wrote: What error are you getting at boot?

When I try to boot from that drive, the screen just goes blank.

mainegeek Wrote: Have you replace the drive cables with new ones? or tried it on the other controller?

No. I have not tried that yet. But I will tonight.

mainegeek Wrote: Have you tried booting with the OS cd ...

Yes. I booted from a win98 CD (the one I originally used to partition the disk), and ran FDisk. But it came up with the error.

mainegeek Wrote: you may have a chance of recoverying the data yourself using GetDataBack

I am concerned that the problem is deeper than that. I suspect that the new electronics can't even read the platters. I have heard that larger HDDs have to be individually calibrated. This is why I think that repairing the old electronics might work.

Thanks for the suggestions guy.

Hugo Elias

 

[Rufusman]

Maxtor drives have a complicated way of matching firmware on thier newer drives. The best advice I can give you is to match the model number as closely as possible to the original. What are the differences between the two model numbers?

RM

http://www.pcbsearch.com.au

 

[Rocketmagnet]

Rufusman,
The model numbers are an exact match. But there are several other numbers printed on the drive which differ slightly (apart from the serial number). I'm not sure which of the numbers represent the firmware number.

Hugo