TVS removal or PCB change?

[Edvald]

Hi
I have fried quite a few hard drives the last year due to bad luck/negligence and when i fried three of them just this weekend i decided to give it a go at recovering my data. I am pretty sure by reading here and looking at pictures posted by you guys that all of my disks have fried TVS. I am guessing its the 5V one because almost all of them have been fried after i used a power cord that had the 5V and 12V switched, the 5V got the 12V and the 12V got the 5V. I assume the 12V TVS wont fry when it gets 5V but the 5V would probably fry when it gets 12V instead of 5V.

Now theres one disk "Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 640Gbytes" that i am pretty sure has a fried TVS because of the smell of burnt electronics but since the circuits are turning towards the drive i cant actually see the burned TVS without removing the PCB. As luck would have it i went to a computer store and i found a brand new identical drive and i mean identical, right down to the date and site code, everything matches, thy are like identical twins =) and my question is this. Would you guys switch the PCB or would you first try removing the TVS on the original PCB and if that fails then try switching the PCB:s? To get to the TVS on the PCB i would have to remove it anyway, i am just worried that the PCB might get damaged or something when i am handling it.

I am going to try removing the TVS from another drive that has a fried one just as a test before i go at it with the more important drives.

How good would you say my odds are if the only thing thats fried is the TVS and i do a PCB change with these identical drives?

[drc]

Sounds like a TVS. PCB change probably wouldn't do the trick due to adaptives etc. I'd suggest to take the PCB off, take a picture of the component side and post it. Then you can get a better answer.

[networkpc3000]

please contact me if you need PCB for replace. send email to me. thanks

[Edvald]

Well i am happy to tell everybody that i managed to recover the data from the drives and it was the TVS that was fried on all of them, i just removed it and they came alive again.
This is the TVS of the 640gig drive, i am going to remove it now because it went so well with the other drives =)

Why don't the manufacturers create the drives with changeable fuses or something?

[hddguy]

Why don't the manufacturers create the drives with changeable fuses or something?

Because they are not manufactured with failure, or even Data Recovery in mind.....

[HDD Spaz]

Why don't the manufacturers create the drives with changeable fuses or something?

When they make the drives they don't plan for the disk to fail. Like anything mechanical, things will always go wrong.

You be asking next "why don't manufacturers back up my data for me?"

[Edvald]

Well them backing up my data for me would be nice but creating user electronics with fuses is quite common, even your car has a fuse box with fuses you are supposed to be able to change yourself using the manual. If they are not planning for failure why would the put in the TVS, does it have any other purpose?

[Edvald]

well i guess that the car example is not all that good because in probably none of the individual parts have fuses themselves.

[wiseleo]

A better question would be why are there no voltage regulators on external hard drive boxes to prevent you from frying them with laptop power supplies. Price. Will you pay extra for an enclosure with a voltage regulator? Will you pay more for a better quality power supply that will actually look good on a scope? Most won't.

A TVS is a form of a fuse. It's simply not an end user part. It fails for a good reason and usually the drive can't be considered reliable after that event anyway.

[CK]

When they make the drives they don't plan for the disk to fail. Like anything mechanical, things will always go wrong.

What about Seagate???

[HDD Spaz]

Good point.

[Edvald]

well i would definitely buy a external hdd box with a changeable fuse as long as it does not exceed the cost of buying two boxes. I bought a Iomega 1TB box with two hdd:s that where in raid 1 because i thought, if one fail at least i have the other one. Little did i know that a power surge would fry them both.

Does Seagate plan for disk failure in a good way or a bad way from the end users point of view? =)
All my disk are Seagate, in the good old days they where all IBM but when those began to fail i decided to only buy Seagate disks.