Hitachi Deskstar HDP725050GLA360 - Help!

[Raven1982]

Hey Guys (and girls).

I thought I'd start with a hi and thanks for allowing me to sign up so quick to this interesting forum.

Having played with HDD's a little (Seagate Barracuda to be precise), I learnt that a little bit of searching never goes astray when trying to find an answer to my HDD-related issues.

I fixed the seagate, but this one is way out of my league in terms of what can I do next, I need my data!

So here is the story.

A couple of days ago I powered on my pc and my power supply did a nice flashbang out the back and managed to fry my main board, processor, ram.

Cue a new computer rebuild last night, my mate and I plugged in a new power supply and nothing, the system wouldnt switch on, so trial and error of disabling power to the seperate components, we found that my Hitachi HDD was the cause.

When plugged into power, the whole system wont even switch on. So the original power supply death that fried everything else has damaged my drive with all my important photos on there (I have photos of a friend who passed away 4 years ago on there).

Here are all the details of the drive.

Front Sticker

Model: HDP725050GLA360
P/N: 0A35415
MLC: BA2831
Build Date: May-2009

PCB

0A29778
BA2798
MSH919
253F

Board Stamped

110 0A90026

Since this drive wont get power, is there anything I can do (removing pcb components) to somehow get power back and recover my data?

Any help would be greatly appreciated and fingers crossed I can do something with it!

Regards
Mick

[pclab]

Post a picture of the PCB, both sides to see what happened to it.

[Raven1982]

I will do so once I can get a torx bit big enough to fit

[Raven1982]

Front Side



Back Side



Nothing seems to be visibly wrong with the board as nothing is burnt out...

[pcimage]

Check the TVS diodes (two back components bottom right) with a multimeter in continuity mode.

Should be open, not closed.

[fzabkar]

To help you identify the components, here is a similar board:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/HD ... 60_TVS.jpg

[Raven1982]

Thanks for the quick response fzabkar.

I just tested then with my multimeter and here are the results.

The one on the left reads 458 with no continous beep.

The one on the right reads 000 and has a continuous beep.

[labtech]

The beeping tvs is the culprit. Hopefully nothing else.

[Raven1982]

How would I go about fixing/bypassing it so I can pull the data from the drive?

[dick]

First remove the shorted tvs.
Then use the multimeter and test accross the same pads to verify the short has been removed, and if so the drive can be powered on as is.
You must take notice the tvs protection has now been removed so if you run the drive on a poor quality psu there is a risk of damaging the drive further.
It would be better to replace the tvs in which case the drive would probably be suitable for continued use.
If you don't replace the tvs then just grab your data and discard the drive.
If at this point you still can't get your data you would most likely require pro assistance!
Good luck!

[Raven1982]

Thanks dick, much appreciated.

I'll get the soldering iron out tomorrow and give it a shot and report back how I went.

[Raven1982]

Success!

After removing the faulty TVS, my drive powered up once again and I got ALL the data off it.

A big thanks to fzabkar and dick for talking me through it and being able to recover my data!

If you guys have paypal, please PM me your details. A small but worthy donation will be heading your way!

Regards
Mick

[dick]

Ah success always feels good!

As for your kind offer I would decline it but what you could do is next time you see a charity worker collecting donations with a tin, give a little.