Raise Dead HDD's from the Grave by Saving your Old Drives 3

[ajr3]

I've got more than 1,000 PC's in our stable and as is usually present in the corporate environment, a lot of them have older disc drives. When I de-commission an old PC I always SAVE THE HARD DRIVE. Why, do you ask?

Nothing's scarier than the "No Drive Detected" or "Drive Type 0" etc. from a disc drive. You try to listen and the drive doesn't even spin up! Well, before you prepare for hara-kiri, try this:

DISCLAIMER! THIS PROCEDURE WILL REALLY TRULY VOID YOUR WARRANTY. DON'T TRY IT ON SOMETHING THAT'S IN WARRANTY. ALSO, YOU ASSUME ALL RISKS WITH THIS PROCEDURE I.E. IF YOUR DISC DRIVE SMOKES DON'T HAVE YOUR LAWYER CALL PLEASE!

Most "completely dead drive" type failures result from a fault in the drive controller board, not the drive mechanical assembly (HDA or Head-Disk-Assembly, the part that's hermetically sealed). This board controls the power to the motors, etc. so if it fails the drive sometimes won't even spin up!

Here's where that collection of old hard drives comes in. If you can get a PERFECT MATCH on the model number, you can exchange the controller board WITHOUT opening the HDA. Just remove the board from the bad drive carefully and exchange it with the board from your drive collection. Since you are working with two identical drives it's a good idea to MARK EVERYTHING before your start since it's really easy to get confused.

I've rescued six drives this way in the last ten years.

Enjoy!

 

[dkediger]

I've used this method succesfully as well. Note that it does apply only to IDE/ATA type drives, not to SCSI, or the ancient RLL/MFM/ESDI types.

 

[Guest_imported]

easy to say ! where i can find a board for quantum 6.4
serial no : 6.4AT P/N CX64A011 Rev 02-B for that ?


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