Hello,

Got one of these drives and its dead, seems to be a different problem from the usual clicking problems I can find on the net.

Its not spinning, not at all. With the cover off it turns by hand easily. It can also be seen in the BIOS, pc on bootup says theres an error with the hard drive, then I go into the BIOS and it can see it as a Maxtor SABRE2, but it cant get any more information off the hd.

Any ideas? Wouldnt have thought it was the PCB as it can be seen? What other diagnostics can I do?

In what environment did you open it, to spin the platters by hand? Where did you touch the platters to do that?


So the PCB ROM firmware is running.


Without jumping to some (fairly obvious) conclusions... What's the history of the drive? What changed between when it was working OK, and now? Is this your drive (so you know everything that happened) or does it belong to someone else (so they may not have told you the full story)? What has been tried already (apart from your comment in the first paragraph)? Have you examined the PCB for any obvious visual abnormalities? You may want to attach close-up photo(s) of the whole PCB (component side), for readers to see if they spot anything.

It was opened up in my kitchen, not exactly a sealed lab but its dead, Im not spending hundreds getting it fixed so it cant get worse.
My drive, from a desktop pc and it just died.
Visibly the PCB looks ok, but ive ordered up a replacement to try.

Thanks for the info.


Actually, if it was just the PCB, then opening it may indeed have made things worse - i.e. that may have changed what was just an electronics problem, into a partial or total loss of data, if there's now a head crash during DIY recovery, due to contamination. Of course it's your disk, so you can decide on what you want to do, if you're accepting the risks of DIY and are never going to send the disk to a DR company.

I would still supply the photos I mentioned, if I was in your position, but it's your choice. Good luck!

Too many things have to match AND the problem can surely be elsewhere. Not sure, but will be a lot of time (and some £££ ) waste.