i recently bought a harddisk (seagate barracude OEM with a ST3500320AS 7200.11 pcb board) which just before i bought it held a barbecue. upon taking the pcb board out, i saw a nice burning mark, exactly where the tvs is/should be (at least what was left of the tvs). not knowing a lot about harddisks, i came across this forum. apparantly a harddrive can work without the tvs, so i soldered the tvs off. after which the harddrive worked again like a charm. spinned up, my external casing recognised it again and it was alive.... but, i would like to solder another tvs back in place. but, the old tvs was burned (print was melted), so i don't know what 'kind' of tvs it was.
i have an old ide hdd laying around with bad platters, i can solder the tvs off that drive. but, i am not sure what the tvs is. i am guessing that it is the one the closest to the power connector (there is only one 'black rectangle' that can qualify as a tvs), but is there only one? shouldn't there be 2 (on for the 5 volt line and one for the 12 volt line?).
off course the bbq drive is a sata drive, the donor drive is an old 8 gig ide drive. can i just take the tvs of the old 8 drive and solder it onto the sata pcb board? how to identify whether it is a 5 or 12 volt tvs (assuming that makes any sense, e.g. that there are 2 tvs's. i might be wrong off course). and i assuming, a tvs being a diode, that i should solder it the right direction (being it a diode, and having a anode and cathode side). if so, which side is the anode and which one is the cathode? (both on the tvs itself, and on my sata pcb (ST3500320AS 7200.11)). a lot of questions, and hopefully a lot of answers. as far, this forum helped me out getting the drive working again so far. so i have good hopes.
it is the exact pcb board in the picture (on this forum) at post 8 (it is the tvs just to the upper right that is burned):
st3500320as-7200-fried-t10453.html