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elviswarhol · Officially active! Joined: 03 Jul 2006 Posts: 4

Hi,
Looking for a replacement logic board for a Maxtor Maxline II 300GB (5A300J0) drive.

GTLA Number on failed drive:
5 A 300 J 008 16 R4

GTLA Number match required:
5 A xxx x xxx 16 xx

Any assistence is greatly appreciated.
kind regards
josh

qubit · Active contributor Joined: 24 Aug 2006 Posts: 7

I've been trying to find a replacement for the same model drive. Strangely, mine got fried only 12 days before you made your post. Coincidence?
(I only discovered this forum today.)

Two ebay-bought drives later, I realize that the "0816R4" and "RAM51VV0" are not specific enough. AFAIK, all of them have those same codes. My guess is that the "DFAA" or "DnFAA" code on the sticker under the IDE connector is an important thing to match, but possibly not the only thing.

The drive I need to recover is "D6FAA" with a manufacture date of "29MAY2004". What's yours?
Have you had any sucess or failure yet, in finding a match?

The first swap I tried was with a D4FAA, 15APR2004. It made some high-pitched whines when trying to spin up, and not only was it not detected, but it prevented every other IDE device on the motherboard from being detected as well.

The second swap was a D4FAA, 24JUL2004. This actually got it to spin up, and park itself when powered down, but it was not detected; when anything tried to detect it, I heard a click from the drive.

I wonder if this is just bad luck, or if it's an unmatched firmware version, or if this particular drive keeps data in ROM that is extremely finely tuned to its individual characteristics.

At this point I'm thinking about transferring the ROM chip from my fried board to a good board using a solder gun. But I have no experience soldering such tiny connections.

I'm also still interested in finding matches, if anyone has a MaXLine II to offer.

elviswarhol · Officially active! Joined: 03 Jul 2006 Posts: 4

Hi there,
I did have some luck finding a hard drive with duplicate serial numbers on ebay in the United States - I just had to ask each seller if they could provide me with the GTLA number for one of their drives (most sell from palatte which have all the same models). The drive I found was 320gig model of the 300gb faulty one I have - unfortunately when I swapped the boards on the old faulty drive with the new one - the old faulty drive still didn't work - and when I put the old faulty drives IO board on the new drive it still worked. So - saddly - I've come to the conclusion that the drives problem isn't with it's IO board - but the disk platters themselves Sad

D6FAA is not a number that is relovent to your search for a matched board. You'll find that the number you need to match is labeled on the large white stick on the drive as something like GTLA or TLA number. You do not need an exact match for this number - however there are some numbers in the sequence that must to be the same.

At the begining of this I wrote to Maxtor tech support and they responded with the following regarding finding matched drives via their serial numbers. If you are trying to replace a MaxLine drives board the 2nd paragraph is what's relevant to you:

To replace the circuit board on all Quantum and SCSI Hard Drives (up to and including the Atlas 10K III): Example GTLA or P/N ZZ10ayyz-xx-x (or ZZ10ayyz Rev. xx-x). ZZ and z have to be the same as the original drive, otherwise it is not possible to replace the circuit board. The same format applies to models DiamondMax Plus D740X, DiamondMax D540X-4K, here the relevant number is called Maxtor GTLA.

For the following Maxtor hard drive models: Fireball 3, DiamondMax 16, DiamondMax Plus 8, DiamondMax Plus 9, Diamond Max 10 and all MaxLine products there is also a GTLA Number on the model (next to barcode on the bottom of the drive). Format 1Y222J2223322. 1, 2 and 3 stand for numbers, Y and J for letters. The numbers 1 and 3 as well as the letter Y need to be identical to be able to replace the PCB on these drives.

To replace the circuit board on all other Maxtor drives the drives need to have the same PCBA uplevel number (which describes the revision of the circuit board) and need to be from the same drive family (e.g. Diamond Max 60 or D540X-4D).
They don't need to have the same capacity. You can find the model numbers of particular product families on our website. Under the following link http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/products/index.htm select your specific drive and it should show all model numbers of the same family.

The following link should help you locate the correct numbers:
https://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/olh_adp.php?p_faqid=824

I hope this helps you find an appropriate matched drive and that the drive you are trying to repair is infact failing due to it's IO board - not a platter issue like mine.
kind regards
josh

qubit · Active contributor Joined: 24 Aug 2006 Posts: 7

elviswarhol · Officially active! Joined: 03 Jul 2006 Posts: 4

Hi Dave,
I'd like to remain optimistic, and you may indeed be correct about there being other numbers that need to be matched - however I guess what got me down the most was that when I put the IO board from the drive that wasn't working onto the brand new one - the brand new one still worked 100%.
If the old drives IO board was broken or damaged in any way - this wouldn't have been the case. Perhaps doing a similar test may quickly resolve whether or not you have an IO board issue?
I hope this isn't the case with your HD - but keep in mind if it is a platter based issue, powering up the drive can cause futhur damage and prevent future data recover from being possible (something I'm currently having to save up for as I can't afford the £380 platter recovery charge).
Oh for a dust free environment! (not to meantion the tools and skills to swap the platters!).
At any rate - please do let me know if you are successful in getting the data off your drive - or if you know of any good platter recovery services in the UK.
Best of luck.
Josh

qubit · Active contributor Joined: 24 Aug 2006 Posts: 7

qubit · Active contributor Joined: 24 Aug 2006 Posts: 7

Josh,

Good luck with the recovery and saving up for it. I'd like to hear how it goes, even if developments happen quite some time from now.

I'm going to practice some SMD soldering in preparation for doing it on my Maxline II's board. I've identified a 1 Mbit "boot block" flash chip, which I hope is the only unique element. (Though I fear that the Poker D.7 may have flash memory in it as well.) For practice, I have to pick something that I wouldn't mind destroying, but that I can easily test if it's working... so, thanks for the luck :-)

Best regards,
David

elviswarhol · Officially active! Joined: 03 Jul 2006 Posts: 4

Good luck Dave. Sounds like a risky business - but hopfully it will pay off.
I don't like the prospect of soldering that D.5 Poker chip tho! You'll need a lot of patience for all those tiny connections, so hopefully it wont need changing. I'll keep you posted on my developements (if any) - and once I've got it sorted out would be happy to post any components if they would be of use to you. Obviously I need to get things sorted out this end first though - most probably this envolves simply saving the cash - which may saddly be some time away.
-josh