What would you quote to repair this 1.8" drive connector?

[LarrySabo]

The connector was ripped from a Toshiba MK2239GSL 1.8" 220GB hard drive by the customer:



I estimated 20 minutes for each trace no longer connected to a pad and 10 minutes each for those that is, which comes to about 5 hours labour. The partition was reported by the customer to be Raw, so there is imaging and logical recovery required afterwards. I quoted 7.5 times my hourly rate plus HST but that apparently exceeds the perceived value of the vacation videos on the drive. My normal rate for PCB repairs is 2.5 times my labour rate but that's just for ROM swaps, TVS diodes, etc.

Was I being unreasonable?

[lcoughey]

Would it not be cheaper and faster to replace the PCB?

[LarrySabo]

Yes, if one could be found. Unfortunately, I could not find one, other than as part of a working drive--of which I could only find 2, one $377 USD and the other around $1,100 CAD. I've returned the drive to the customer as there appears to be no economically feasible fix.

[fzabkar]

A former colleague used to enjoy these kinds of repair jobs.

If I were doing this job I would determine which pins were the +3.3V and Ground pins.



The "X" component looks like it may be a fuse, in which case the 2 associated pads would be +3.3V. A continuity check with a known ground point would find the ground pins.

The group of seven pins above the C55 text would probably be ...

Gnd -- SATA Tx or Rx pair -- Gnd -- SATA Rx or Tx pair -- Gnd

An examination of the traces leading to the Tx/Rx pins would confirm whether they are differential pairs (two sets of thin parallel tracks).

Of course it would help to locate an actual pinout diagram, but Toshiba's documentation is a joke. Instead I would locate the service manual for the camera or camcorder at ElektroTanya or Eserviceinfo and examine the circuit diagrams.

[LarrySabo]

Thanks Franc, but the problem was not determining the pin-out, it was physically joining the traces/pads to the LIF cable that's part of the 22-pin to SATA adapter that came with the camera. I'd actually enjoy the soldering job, tedious as it would be.

My plan was to attach the LIF cable from the adapter to what's left of the original connector (http://prntscr.com/6kkpqf), just mm from the circuit board. Then it would be a simple job of installing jumpers to the corresponding lines on the circuit board, remounting the circuit board to the drive, plugging the SATA adapter into my recovery gear, creating an image, and finally doing the logical recovery. The rough shape of the circuit board traces and pads and their minute size is what I expected to take so long--hence the high quote.

The customer had obtained an estimate of $500 CAD from a DR shop here in Ottawa but they hadn't seen the extent of the damage. I felt my quote was competitive but it was obviously still too high for the customer to justify the expenditure. Now I'm having second thoughts about whether I should have been able to do the repair in less time, and quoted a lower fee.

[Keatah]

I could do it in 30 minutes half-assed and good enough to get the data. About an hour for a proper repair to where the board could be put back into service. All the connections are there they just need a bit of jumper wire to a new connector.

[fzabkar]

Larry, if you had researched the pinout, you have been surprised at just how little work would have been necessary. In fact the 24-pin connector reduces to 16 pins by via a special flex cable.

In addition to the standard SATA power and data pins, there are in fact only 2 additional pins. One is an output from the drive (DAS/DSS) and doesn't appear to go anywhere, while the second is a HDD_UNLOAD input. I can't tell whether it is active low or active high, but it would be easy to find out.

I found the following service manual (Level 3) which has the requisite pinouts:

Sony HDR-PJ260/PJ260E/PJ260V/PJ260VE/XR260E/XR260V Service Manual (Levels 2 and 3):
https://docs.sony.com/release/mdsm/983463634_sm.pdf (L2)
https://docs.sony.com/release/mdsm/983463611_sm.pdf (L3)

AIUI the camera accommodates the following HDD models:

MK1639GSL
MK2039GSL
MK2239GSL

The HDD interface appears to have 6 vendor specific pins, only one of which has been utilised/defined by Sony (HDD_UNLOAD). The rest are left unconnected.

Attachments

[fzabkar]

The DAS/DSS pin should be grounded to spin up the drive, at least for regular SATA models.

DAS/DSS = Device Activity Signal / Disable Staggered Spinup (standard SATA power pin #11)

http://www.mpi.ch/files/File/Innodisk/E ... Rev1_2.pdf
http://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/prod ... ochure.pdf

[LarrySabo]

Thanks, Franc. You're a wiz at research! I will review your post later today and perhaps re-approach the client with a lower price once I know what needs doing.

[fzabkar]

It's always easy to be wise in hindsight, but ISTM that the customer's adapter should have given you a clue. Presumably it converts the drive's 24-pin interface to standard 22-pin SATA, so one would have to wonder what it does with the extra pins. I'm assuming that there are no electronic components apart from a 3.3V LDO regulator, so I'm guessing that the extra pins (eg the Vendor_Specific ones) would be left unconnected. This in turn would imply that repairing them would be unnecessary. A simple continuity test would have identified the DAS/DSS pin as pin #11, SATA power.

[LarrySabo]

As I mentioned, pinouts were not thought to be the issue. It was the challenge of soldering so many mangled microscopic traces that I found daunting. One-to-one jumpers to the LIF connector was my proposed solution, but you've saved me much work by identifying what need not be jumpered. The most-mangled traces were the vendor specific lines and need not to be repaired, saving me much time. Thanks for illuminating that.

BTW, the customer has agreed to my original estimate of 5 times my hourly rate for the repair plus data recovery, so I'm looking forward to putting my new microscope to work.

[LarrySabo]

Just to close this thread, I connected the data lines to a SATA data connector, and the 3.3v line and all grounds through a 5-3.3v adapter to a SATA power connector. The DSS/DAS line was also connected to the power ground. The SATA connectors were then connected to my DFL-DDP for imaging; unfortunately, but the drive would not spin up at all. I verified all my connections and double-checked for shorts/bad joints and all seemed in order. With the Toshiba HDA connector design, it was not possible to isolate the HSA to see if a dead preamp was at play. Nor was there reason to suspect bad heads/pre-amp, given the history of the drive. Not knowing what else to try, I removed all my leads and returned the drive to the customer. Total waste of time, except for fun experience of soldering 0.6mm leads under a microscope.