Hi all,

I thought I would make my first post a great one. Enjoy

I have a Fujitsu MHS2060AT Hard drive which I have had many years fun with. Its does not hold anything important and its just a drive for fun and transporting files between my brother and me, mainly movies and such.

However, at first this drive used to be power hungry, talk about saving energy, this thing required a lot of amps to run and once I connected it to a USB case, it needed more. But we managed to find good power sources to run the drive and everything ran smoothly. We also used a 6V blue tooth power adaptor and that worked well for many years, until we lost it.

Then my brother went testing with different power supplies, keeping in the 5v range. But somehow, he blew the drive and I was left with the task to repair the damn thing. It was a useful drive and buying a new one was unnecessary at the time.

So I unscrewed the PCB board and discovered a small component (Black with a O written in the middle) had blown, from the searches on these forms, it looks like it might have been a fuse of some kind. So I nicked one of a completely messed up spare drive I had and fitted that in its place.

After a few messed up soldering attempts and burned fingers, the drive worked again, with one drawback, a chip, or a group of components on the board near the replaced component would rapidly heat up and case the drive to click, or drop in power. It would not spin down, just the voice coil would seem to reset into its safety point and reload. I assumed the power regulator chip was the culprit as it overheated and caused a power failure and then stabalised for a few seconds before doing it again. I have no idea why replacing a fuse was overheating the chip and components (I have included a picture, sorry for the quality, it was scanned and I do not have access to a camera at the moment) but I remedied this problem by attaching a lump of metal to the top of the chip and the drive itself to act as a heat sink…

Talk about a bodged up job… But it worked for another year until by brother left the drive plugged in over night, ON! I told him not to do this, but he forgot.

Now the drive only clicks as it struggles to start. I guess the small chip at the bottom of the board marked A208 RFM Might have cooked itself, or a component might have died. There are some dark capacitors (I think that’s what you call them) and a whole lot of other components on that board.

I fiddled with the board and tried to test some individual components to see if power was being blocked, but when I was using a voltmeter, I might have accidentally shorted something and I no longer hear the clicking when the drive is powered on. The main control chip now heats up, so does the other chips, except the memory chips.

From what I can tell, the drive mechanics seem to be fine and the motor and internal heads and every thing seems good. (No, I did not open the cover and look inside.) the drive worked fine before the power mess up.

Anyway, like I said, the drive is not important, I thought it might be a bit of fun to see what the problem is and see if the drive can be put back into working order as it did come in handy. Anyone who might have this make of drive might benefit from this discussion.

Many thanks
Shane

Thanks for the great story


OK, and that's good for you, but also means it isn't worth much investment in time from me either. I'll just explain a vital point where you don't seem to have "joined the dots", which explains some of your subsequent problems...


Replacing the fuse didn't cause the problem! You've got that the wrong way round.

Like in 99.9% of cases, fuses (in this case a fusible resistor) blow for a reason - so the damage elsewhere on the board (due to overvoltage, perhaps) had been done first; then the fusible resistor was subjected to overcurrent and "blew"; then you replaced that resistor. However, the underlying problem (which causes the overcurrent through that resistor) hasn't been identified or fixed - so I'm not surprised that the drive didn't behave the same afterwards.

It might be possible to fix the board, but likely uneconomic in terms of the time required, especially trying to do so remotely, and since you may have caused more damage by that slip of the multimeter probes (so we don't know how many faults now exist).

Someone might help you, but I wanted to answer your question of "why did replacing the fuse" cause those subsequent problems - it didn't; the problems had been caused anyway, and you just allowed the damaged component(s) to receive power again, by replacing the fusible resistor.

Thanks for that and glad you like the tale

like a said, it was a little bit of fun that might help someone who really needs the info.. Also, I've noticed that I probably won't be able to move the main chip to a doner board as all the pins are under the damn thing. If thats the correct chip I am talking about.