Hi all,

I'm new to this forum and a total noob when it comes to HDD repair, so please assume I have no idea what I'm talking about...

I have been attempting to DIY repair the above HDD after it failed due to me swapping the computer's power supply and leaving in place the SATA power cables of the old supply. From what I have been able to establish, this has caused the 12V TVS diode (?) to burn out. I have removed the offending part and was able to partially recover some of the data on the drive.

However, the drive is displaying some weird behaviour, which makes a full recovery of the data on the drive a game of chance:
The drive will come online only after a random amount of time of being connected to the PC. A quick restart will make the drive discoverable and accessible, and I am able to copy some of the data across to a new drive.
But it will drop again after 3 seconds, or 1 minute, or 10 minutes and then sit there and not spin up for another random amount of time.

I suppose I could keep on playing this game until I have a complete set of data, but is there anything that might make this process a little more reliable?

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Cheers.

UPDATE:

I have spent the day persisting with the incremental backup of files whenever the drive was available.
This was basically a process of sitting by the computer and waiting for the drive to spin up. Which could take anywhere between 10-15mins, but I had a couple of periods where nothing was happening for about an hour. Then to copy files for as long as it would stay online. Which again was highly varied.

As it turns out the drive has a couple of bad sectors, too, which caused me to loose a few files. If this was caused by the original event or not i cannot say. The other thing that remains an absolute mystery to me is why a piece of electronics would behave this way?! How can it be that one minute it works and is dead as a door nail the next? Maybe there are some people on these forums that can shed some light on this...

Anyhow all in all I managed to pull 99.99% of all data off the drive and will now proceed to retire it. Plus, I am now the proud owner of a $16 multitool, a brand new 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD. And I am still in the possession of approximately A$800-1400, which is what I was quoted to get the data professionally retrieved. Overall, not a bad outcome.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers.

@Spildit, I don't normally question you, but did you completely read the OP's post? The original issue was wrong power to the drive, and after removing a failed safety diode it is operational again, but with the faulty condition. Please explain why you posted information for what would seem like a fix for an otherwise failing drive, I am confused...

_________________
http://www.hddsuperclone.com
Home of HDDSuperClone

At least the removal of the TVS seems clear.

BattleXer, the picture is of your own board, isn´t it, or is it from another disk ?


In the case you removed the board from the disk to unsolder the TVS diode, did you clean the contacts in the back side ? Inspect that again, and clear them just in case.

Now, are you connecting the disk to an internal SATA port of your computer, or using
an USB adapter ?

You have removed the 5V TVS diode. This is consistent with an overvoltage on the +5V input. Therefore there may be some concern as to the state of the preamp inside the HDA. Perhaps it was stressed?


So the drive spins down during read access?

I agree with @rogfanther -- try to clean up the corrosion at the HDA contacts with a soft white pencil eraser. Don't rub too hard. Also measure the voltage at the TVS diode pad. Is it right on +5V, or is it a little low?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Wishful EDIT: I got interrupted and posted before I wanted to. Then while trying to edit, it was too late...

@ Spildit, So after reading your post again, I am just curious what you think happened to the drive from the wrong power applied that would cause that, and why you say that the data recovered is likely no good.

_________________
http://www.hddsuperclone.com
Home of HDDSuperClone

I should have added, if the drive is being connected to the internal sata port, is the power cable good ? Those symptoms could be caused also by some intermittent disconnection of power to the drive, like in a loose or damaged connector.

Makes sense. I was writing my original post and was not ready to post yet, and may not have, but sometimes things happen and the submit button gets pushed

_________________
http://www.hddsuperclone.com
Home of HDDSuperClone

Yeah it's a photo from my own board. I did not remove the PCB when I removed the diode.
So not sure about the condition of the ports on the other side.

I had the drive connected to an internal SATA port and power, which is confirmed good, running another drive without issues.



Yes, the drive would just spin sown randomly as if it lost all power and become unavailable.
This would have been good advice yesterday. I thought something wasn't entirely clean and might cause the sort of behaviour the drive was displaying.
Damage to the pre-amp seems plausible, too. In this case I would have definitely been out of my depth and gone the profesional help route.



I did approach several DR firms, and the quotes I got were between $800-$1400 Australian. I guess we pay the down-under tax on everything and anything... The other problem I had was that I had 2 identical Samsung drives, both of which got fried at the same time, and I wasn't sure which one was containing my data. So all of a sudden I was looking at potentially 3 grand to get my data back without guarantees...

Hence the DIY approach to see what I could do about it.

As I stated above, the drive did have a couple of bad sectors, one of which I was aware of prior to the problems. Hitting those, the drive would just sit and tick, not copying any further. I got around this problem by omitting the affected files, and copying everything else.

Anyhow, thank you for your insights. I am pretty sure the data I have retrieved is very much intact.
And I have invested in some backup-software to avoid this problem in the future.

Cheers!