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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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Strange case today

March 2nd, 2016, 9:54

Hello!

I found this case is strange to me so I would like to share it with you :

WD10TMVW-11ZSS4 / PCB : 771761

The led blinks but no power on at all. I suspect ( PCB - Pre-amp - Scratches to the surface )
After replacing PCB's no spin up. So it's (Pre-amp and/or Scratches )
After opening the drive I found no visible scratches ( at least on the top side ).
I suspect Pre-amp so I replaced heads from matched donor.
After heads replacement no luck too :(
After several investigations I found this :)
So I prepared to connect the motor wires again and it's imaging now (approx. 35%)

P.S : Patient heads working perfect :)
Attachments
IMG_20160302_145737.jpg
IMG_20160302_143924.jpg

Re: Strange case today

March 2nd, 2016, 9:57

So it was the coper connections that were bad and you made a "direct" connection?
Good work

Re: Strange case today

March 2nd, 2016, 10:00

pclab wrote:So it was the coper connections that were bad and you made a "direct" connection?

Yes it was my friend :)
But I didn't notice that before replacing heads :(

Thank you :)

Re: Strange case today

March 2nd, 2016, 10:14

Good job!

Re: Strange case today

March 2nd, 2016, 10:17

northwind wrote:Good job!

Thank you my friend :)

Re: Strange case today

March 2nd, 2016, 10:22

Cool! Thanks for sharing.

Re: Strange case today

March 2nd, 2016, 10:26

In no-spin cases I would always test the motor windings. I wonder how the flex cable was damaged, though.

Re: Strange case today

March 2nd, 2016, 10:35

hyuce wrote:Cool! Thanks for sharing.

Thank you.

fzabkar wrote:In no-spin cases I would always test the motor windings.

Agree. But this failure is common with those drives (PCB is rare, Pre-amp / heads are common )
So, I was so hasty with diagnosis. :)

Someone has cut it deliberately. :(

Re: Strange case today

March 2nd, 2016, 11:12

fzabkar wrote:In no-spin cases I would always test the motor windings. I wonder how the flex cable was damaged, though.


Ahmed.
I have the same question as frank .IMHO this is not done deliberately as if it was then the cut would not be as it is .But the end result is good hence everything is fine

Re: Strange case today

March 2nd, 2016, 14:00

fzabkar wrote:In no-spin cases I would always test the motor windings.

+1. Test easy things first.

Re: Strange case today

March 3rd, 2016, 11:53

Franc, i think it is pretty easy to miss such obvious looking thing when you do DR daily. Most of the cases have head or surface damage, some of them have electronic fault including preamp and some have fw problems. Some of the drive models check heads before spinning up and if they do not pass the test, spinup is canceled too. So when you get a 'lot' of cases with such faults, it is easy to miss such obvious cause, we are humans, not robots. Unless you have a well defined protocol that includes measuring windings and you strictly stick to that. I think we get less than one in 1000 with windings problem while preamp/head problem is fairly frequent.

as far as i can see you are expert in electronics so you look at each problem from that perspective, however, in a normal DR shop electronic faults are not the majority of the cases.

Re: Strange case today

March 3rd, 2016, 12:05

pepe wrote:Franc, i think it is pretty easy to miss such obvious looking thing when you do DR daily. Most of the cases have head or surface damage, some of them have electronic fault including preamp and some have fw problems. Some of the drive models check heads before spinning up and if they do not pass the test, spinup is canceled too. So when you get a 'lot' of cases with such faults, it is easy to miss such obvious cause, we are humans, not robots. Unless you have a well defined protocol that includes measuring windings and you strictly stick to that. I think we get less than one in 1000 with windings problem while preamp/head problem is fairly frequent.

as far as i can see you are expert in electronics so you look at each problem from that perspective, however, in a normal DR shop electronic faults are not the majority of the cases.

That's exactly what I meant with daily common failures with those particular drives.

Re: Strange case today

March 5th, 2016, 6:05

thanks for sharing.
good work

Re: Strange case today

March 5th, 2016, 12:36

Someone has cut it deliberately. :(
So if the person who gave you the drive for recovery didn't cut it then who did and why?

Re: Strange case today

March 5th, 2016, 13:04

dick wrote:
Someone has cut it deliberately. :(
So if the person who gave you the drive for recovery didn't cut it then who did and why?

Actually I don't know. And I asked the customer but he told me that he don't know too.
But you know "Customers always tell lies" :)
So, I think this is from another DR firm.
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