brocken HDD

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Thunderchild said:
the 1 ohm resistors are measuring more like 21-22 ohms, I'm currently working on an image of the whole board (didn't you know you could do a panoramic image of a circuit board ;-) )
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I have no experience fixing HDD but I *think* you cannot measure resistors or any other components reliably without removing it from the circuit as the multimeter reading will be affected by other components connected to it. Did you take the 1 ohm resistor out?
 
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erm taking an smd resistor the size of a pin head out would burn it up for sure and chances of getting it back negligeable. If the metter readings are to be affected by the rest of the circuit this would be by paralel elements only which would help lower the resistance, but in this case I have a 21 ohm reading on a 1 ohm resistor so somethings srewy
 
the voltage accross the resistors is something like 0.1 mV (practically impossible to measure), so I'd assume theres nothing wrong with them and they are passing current, the problem much be further in on the board. the coil is passing power just fine as well. I expect one of the ICs has gone, the 8 V reg is outputting 8 V
 
well I've bitten the bullet and ordered an indentical HDD on ebay to swap the board with, I'll assume it is the board as one moment the motor terminals were dead then they had 4 volts on them then they were dead again
 
well I got another disk the same but a bit older, and the boards are not identical, I put it on and the motor now spins but there is hardly any movement from the head arm and the drive "is not ready" when i try and initialize it (after it is finally recognised).

Should i have an identical pcb ? the disk model is identical
 
I do this for a living spare time..retreive data from crashed hard drives et..
I have swapped pc boards with success saving one companys complete business records.
You cannot swap pcboards from the same model or even manufacturing date. You must look for the pc board model number and match it..I have had same brand hdd and same manufacturing year but different numbers on the pc board because the company upgrades the firmware or they are made at a different plant..

I hope this helps.
 
Hi rusty, yes I eventually discovered this, I have odered a board from ebay with the same mechanics and pcb number rather than just HDD number.

Is there any chance I could have caused problems by putting an older controller board on the HDD ?
 
Hello Thunder,
Yes there is a good possibility you may have upset the mbr (master boot record) of the hdd. However if you are familiar with Linux, you can possibly get around this and other security features if it was a windows operating system..
More on that later if need be after you try the new pc board.
cheers
 
Excellent - now backup the data to another drive quickly just in case and keep the old drive in a cupboard for archive purposes.
 
Why are you giving them the choice ? Tell them the truth. The drive is on borrowed time. The next time it fails there is a very good chance data will be lost. The cost of a new drive should be less that attempting to recover the data. Even if you are doing this for free you need to make that clear.
 
Thunderchild said:
yep only thing now is to convince them that they should get a new one
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They shouldn't even know you got the old one working, you should have immediately copied all data to a new drive for them and disposed of the old one.

I'm with 3V0, it's a REALLY, REALLY bad idea.
 
well I'll pass the comments on, I've told them that they were lucky this time as the board went but that normally the mecanics fails first and that if it does theres nothing I can do as they have to be worked in a clean room by guys in suits (clean room suits)
 
As I said on a previous reply, you can change the pc board on a hard drive if you have the identical model as printed on the pc board. I have had same drives but different dates of manufacture and different manufacturer. It will only work with the same rev of the pcboard..
 
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