Dear all contributors to this forum,
Would just like to say THANKS!

My wife had forgot the power supply to her external USB drive, so used her laptop power supply as it fitted. Unfortunately that fed 19V and the hard drive was dead. It was her only storage place for all old photos.

Tried to put it internally in a PC, which would then not start, so I realised the hard drive had a short circuit. Measuring between ground and 12 V confirmed (no resistance, 0 ohm).

I read on this forum. Since I am not that literate with circuit boards I bought a replacement PCB on E-bay, but that only made the drive spin, not read/write. I read a bit more on this forum, and realised that maybe each PCB is calibrated with unique data for the hard drive it is fitted on.

Tonight I removed the 12V TVS and after a couple of startup attempts, the drive was back to normal! Fortunately only the TVS had been damaged, otherwise I would have required to transfer the ROM from original PCB to the replacement one.

Great!
now quickly make copies of the important stuff!

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

did you jump the two connectors for the TVS or just pull it out?

Shorted is the failure state for the TVS. If you jump the connectors you're just creating a short to ground straight off of the DC-in.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

I had an exact situation, my drive still doesn't respond after removing the TVS. Anyone know of anything else?

Did you check BOTH TVS's to make sure that was the failure point?

the other one tested ok. is there only 2?

I just removed the 12V TVS.
As drsccsc says, it shorts when it fails (=overvoltage). So to remove the short you remove the TVS. This makes the circuit work but leaves it unprotected from future overvoltage.

This is the opposite to a fuse, which breaks when there is overcurrent and jumping it will make the circuit get power again (and leaves it unprotected from future overcurrent)...

just checked a similar component at the left side...it read the same as the other blown TVS. Is that a TVS on the left side, and if so, would it help to remove it?

alright, scratch that last...I removed the other TVS by blown one, and it came on. my situation was the exact same. same hard drive, same problem broke it, and same action fixed it. thanks all!