www.deadharddrive.com

[computermensch]

Hi.

Got unfortunate with 4 pin peripheral power cable to SATA power cable. One of the pins was pushed out when connected to the power supply ... leaving only current on some pins. The PCB fried and the TVS diode did not take the penalty. A chip on the PCB in there almost melted.
Replugin the drive would just make the PCB burning hot.

Took a PCB from another matching drive (RAID) - and the drive would spin up - however sound from the drive heads I guess seems like it wont "catch on" - and the drive is not recognized by the BIOS.

Some got on to the NVRAM thing of newer drives. Hard ball game I guess.

Is the problem I have likely to be about the NVRAM - eventually having to fix this exact PCB - or can I do something else about the drive spinning up but not really catching on alike "bump, bump" and the going down again? So curious? Does the NVRAM "this PCB for this drive only phenomenon" behave like that ... the drive spinning up ... and then like the reading in the drive just wont catch on ... so you need the original NVRAM?

If so is it a true statement I might as well throw out the drive - no way to fix it - just a waste of time - since the PCB really got fried ...?

I only have some produced recordings on that drive alike a "build" drive - I would like to recover them - but at the time I decided this drive should not be backed up. However, during march I started experimenting with H.264 processing - so pretty anoying to loose the builds and have to make the machines reprocess all of that work. So guess that volume is going to be included in backup from now on. Mores Law coming true for me. Should have replanned the backup ... when I started taking that volume into H.264 builds.

P.s. Even better - what a paradox ... The replacement PCB I tried out came from a drive that went down last autumn because I was not paying enough attention to a undercooled server at that time. So that drive ran for a weeks slightly above 55 degrees celcius. However, today PCB got working again when I cleaned the print around the part where it connect with that other drives engine. WD Data Life for that drive says its ok - it can pass the extended test and si I am going to throw it into a media center. Nothing important, so never mind when it goes down then.

[computermensch]

BTW I know now it was the Smooth chip (controlling the drive engine) that melted on the PCB .... or should I just correct that to "exploded"? That kind of thing can actually make the HD drive start burning, huh ...I just read that somewhere else ...

Anyone knows how to replace that chip - and is it likely to be the only problem ... when the injury to the drive destroyed the Smooth chip?

[harddrivespecialist]

Powersurge can melt a whole board.
You need a lot of practice to replace any chips, plus there is no guarantee that powersurge did not kill your preamp/heads.
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