Hi. I have a maxtor hard drive. One of my chips are fried (as seen on the pic). Is there any way of fixing it? I'm not to clued up about hard drives, so any computer jargon will automatically shut my brain circuit off. Please help...

Your drive has sustained an overvoltage on the +5V supply. The 5V protection diode has sacrificed itself in an attempt to protect the rest of the board.

Use flush cutters to remove the burnt diode. Make absolutely sure your power supply is good because you will not get a second chance once the protection is removed.

Now power up the drive and hope that there is no other damage.

Good luck.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

So it will work without that chip, but if the power supply is crap then it will fry the entire hard drive? I take it that's the only real option I have. Thanks for your help

Yes, that's about it. You can replace the diode with an SMAJ5.0A from Farnell, Mouser, Digikey.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.