Hello,

My very old Seagate hard drive died today, no signs of life, no spinning no noises, no detection, there were no issues with the hard drive, no bad sectors etc, it was working perfectly fine, even survived an airplane trip very recently in my checked luggage(was working perfectly fine after that).

I believe it may be a PCB problem but I would like an expert opinion whether there is something visually wrong with anything on the PCB. I myself am a computer science major but hardware is not my specialty. I dont have any tools to check the voltage etc but I have done the basic hardware diagnostic and there is no power going to the motor of the hard drive.

I have attached a high res photo of the PCB, Can you guys see any parts burnt or broken? there are no clear burnt parts but may be there is something I missed.

also something weird I noticed, so I have this two Sata Power connectors on one PSU wire, if I connect this hard drive, the other one resets..

It is Seagate ST3500418AS 500 GB.



Thanks

TL;DR My hard drive PCB high res photo is attached, Can you look at it and tell me if you see anything wrong? Thanks

Thank you for your reply, Can you please point those out in the photo?
and also how hard are those to find? like If i wana get it replaced if they infact are shorted.

check sh6964b on left bottom side
it looks fried
find some DR near you to recover your data, if they are valuable for you

Yup, motor chip fried, maybe pre-amp damage needing headswap. Not DIY.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

The 5V and 12V inductors look OK. This would suggest that the TVS diodes may also be OK, in which case the preamp may not have been affected.

ISTM that the failure of the motor controller may not have been a result of an overvoltage. Actual resistance measurements (of the TVS diodes) would help to confirm this. I notice that the preamp and motor contacts are oxidised, so I wonder whether this was a contributing factor.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thank you for your reply, really appreciate it,
I have ordered a replacement board.

I just have one question, Can I just check whether the motor or (something other than the board) is faulty by just connecting the new board to the hard disk without changing the flash chip and see it if it spins?

Will that damage the data on my hard drive or will the drive even respond to the new board without changing the flash?

I just want to know whether I should go with the hassle of getting the rom chip replaced from the old board so i wana test whether it is actually fault of board or not.

That should be OK for Seagate drives.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

so there is a risk of losing data? or entire drive?

I am not aware of any risk to data, but if you are concerned, then place a business card between the PCB and the HDA/preamp connector.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.