Hard drive shorts 12 volts rail

[michaltj]

Hi
I have a 200GB Seagate 7200.7 Ultra ATA/100 (ST3200822A).
It shorts the 12 volts rail. I am planing to change the circuit board. I have access to similar drive, but its SATA. I assume they only differ in the circuit board. Does anybody have any experience in such failure?

 

[garebo]

I do believe that if your hard drive is shorting the 12 volt rail then the pcb board is broken and needs to be replaced. Perhaps the drive itself is still ok if you can put another pcb board on it. I have done that many times.
I just put a pcb board from a fijutsu 40 gig hard drive on a fujitsu 20 gig hard drive and it worked. You should try and get as exactly close as you can so in your case you would want a pcb board similar or exactly same as yours.


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[mainegeek]

Any board swapping that I do is temporary for the purpose of
data recovery.

 

[garebo]

If you got an exact match and it made one good hard drive out of 2 broken hard drives, i dont see the problem. Give it a good stress test to make sure its working fine.
Backups are something we all do anyway so we always have a backup, right?


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[michaltj]

Thank you for your advices
Unfortunately I do not have the exact match. I have access to 4 other Seagate drives, all 7200.7 models. 3 of them are 80GB Ultra ATA/100, one is 200GB SATA. My friend and I swapped the broken board with each of them, but no luck so far. It spins up with all 4, so at least I know the spindle motor is OK. We've tried all, because they have different firmware versions.
I guess the only thing to do (except for professional data recovery) is to buy the exact match.

 

[paparazi]

michaltj
Can I just read between the lines here?

In my experience, it is a bad power supply that damages the hard drive cause it to short to ground.

Fitting a new power supply to the damaged hard drive often results in a blown "new PSU"
My point! it was lightly a bad PSU in the first place.

With this in mind replace the PSU if you already havn't done so.

Martin

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

 

[michaltj]

paparazi
PSU also does not work, but if it caused the HDD to fail, I guess it would also burn other devices that use the 12V rail. I have floppy drive, DVD-ROM, another HDD and they all work OK. I know 12V also goes into the motherboard, I do not know exactly what needs 12V there, but motherboard works OK. In my opinion its the HDD that failed by itself, but then again, I have no experience in such failures, so I may be incorrect. I know 12V powers the spindle motor, and its OK too, so meaby other component that uses 12V failed. The PCB has at least 1 layer inside it, so I cannot trace the 12V path. I am planning to order another exact drive and then swap PCBs.

 

[garebo]

Well, you can check the power supply, check all the rails, the 12v, 3.3 volt, and 5 volt with a very inexpensive multimeter and instructions on how to do this that you can google.
Does the power supply work now? Can you get any hard drive to work with your power supply and motherboard?


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[michaltj]

The power supply does not work, blown fuse. It will take some effort to change it, its soldered to the pcb. All the other components work, in fact the computer is operational with a different PSU and HDD. I'll buy matching hard drive next week, and swap the fuse over the weekend. I do not think the PSU will work, it has an electrical burn smell. I'm still going to test it though.

 

[garebo]

Ok, i didnt realize you had another ps and had it installed.

I dont think anyone realized this either as paparazi noted.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[paparazi]

Yeh I kinda went off track a bit, your best bet is to try an identical PCB if you can.

But ask yourself, how was it I knew the power supply was bad?
My point was: that even though there are other hard drives and CDroms fitted, it is very common for a blown PSU just to take out one hard drive, infact this is the MOST COMMON occurance of damage.
Ocasionally CDroms are damaged, sometimes motherboards, rarely CPU's, ram or graphics but the most common is a single hard drive.
Can you see a pit mark (burn mark) in the centre of one of the PCB's chips?

Martin




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

 

[michaltj]

There is no visible damage to any of SMDs on PSU and HDD PCBs. I've placed an order for a new HDD, it should arrive in couple of days.

Thanks for all the help, I hope I can contribute some day too.