ST3500418AS 12v Rail burnt

[kiteboy]

Hi guys

A friend in work has given me a faulty 500gb hard drive - the shop wanted £700 to get the data off the hard drive - mad price

She plugged in the wrong power adapter and now the drive is dead

Ive taken the PCB off the hard drive and the 12v rail is burnt out (after reading on here) - theres a few post mentioning soldering which maybe worth a go but just not sure really

Was just planning to get a new PCB with the right firmware on it etc from the US for about $50

Im just seeing if there is anything else that can be done - or is the new PCB the best option??

Its a ST3500418AS drive with CC44 firmware

Thanks for any info guys - really appreciated

[Alan2]

Hello friend,
You may also need to transfer the ROM IC from the original board. Usually a direct board swap from one drive to another does not work 100%.

[fzabkar]

the shop wanted £700 to get the data off the hard drive - mad price

She plugged in the wrong power adapter and now the drive is dead

Ive taken the PCB off the hard drive and the 12v rail is burnt out

Ask the shop how much they would charge to remove a shorted TVS diode and solder a jumper wire. :-)

[pcimage]

I must admit, £700 does sound very excessive for a PCB problem. Assuming that is ALL that is wrong with it.

[kiteboy]

Hi guys

Thanks for the info

Well - I found a vid on youtube regarding the 12v diode

I removed the burnt out 12v diode and now the drive is spinning up - yay!!!!

But cant get anything off it - it sometimes shows under drives in windows 7 64bit and sometimes shows in disk management

Whenever I try to enable the drive (as its not showing as initialised) - Im getting cyclic redundancy errors

Tried seagate tools and did a short test when it did show up - and it passed the short test but cant get it to show up again

So annoying - tried in a hp microserver box that I have here and getting something about smart errors on boot

So it definitely looks like the drive has gone

Tried an ubuntu live cd and again the drive would not show up (im using a sata to usb converter I purchased off amazon btw)

Do you think a new PCB is worth a shot in this case or waste of money - im thinking the latter

Such a shame - loads of photos on the drive from a round the world trip

Thanks again

[DanR]

I had the same problem with an old drive.

In my case it was Windows 7 which was playing up. Windows XP managed to pick up the drive fine and I was able to recover all the files.

Boot into Linux and see if you can access the drive.

[truemate]

agree with Danr win xp mostly able to run like these deda drive but win 7 nope.

and be away from this crap seagate HD,even me suffering from 1tb seagate disk

[warnerr]

Me- I would IMAGE that drive ... FIRST thing using pro imaging soft/hardware that will skip bad sectors... then recover off imaged drive. Products such as rstudio will help with that.

[kiteboy]

Cant do anything like that

Ive got Acronis but the drive is only temporarily seen by the bios and in windows and seatools

So even if I could start any imaging program - its likely to fail within seconds (does that make sense)

One minute its there the next its not (only shows in device manager) - and it dissapears from there also

im guessing the PCB maybe the last chance - and worth a risk for say £40

Ive tried knoppix and ubuntu live cds - doesnt show in any of those

[pcimage]

PCB will be a waste of time I'm afraid

[warnerr]

your operating systems in the way- best to use hardware imager such as deepspar or atola.... etc. they read past bad sectors then come back and retry.

[labtech]

PCB will be a waste of time I'm afraid

I second this

[pcimage]

your operating systems in the way- best to use hardware imager such as deepspar or atola.... etc. they read past bad sectors then come back and retry.

Exactly, but the more he hammers away with DIY, the more degraded the drive will become and chances of recovery are getting slimmer and slimmer.

[warnerr]

yes. and imaging a drive with some failing sectors is cheap. Every moment that drive runs its likely creating more bads untiil.... no workie.

[kiteboy]

Its gone back now - its outta my hands - did me best

[electroglow]

your operating systems in the way- best to use hardware imager such as deepspar or atola.... etc. they read past bad sectors then come back and retry.

Exactly, but the more he hammers away with DIY, the more degraded the drive will become and chances of recovery are getting slimmer and slimmer.

I'm sure the same could have been said about your first posts on this board... that you should give up DIY and send it to a pro.. How does that feel? I find this funny... that everyone who was a newbie before and asked for help (and got it), in their time, now tries to brush off other people, as if they were never in their shoes

Don't know, but seems kind of unfair to blame everyone for DIY (if they are aware of the risks and accept them) on every corner.. even though you've been there yourself, most certainly..

[pcimage]

your operating systems in the way- best to use hardware imager such as deepspar or atola.... etc. they read past bad sectors then come back and retry.

Exactly, but the more he hammers away with DIY, the more degraded the drive will become and chances of recovery are getting slimmer and slimmer.

I'm sure the same could have been said about your first posts on this board... that you should give up DIY and send it to a pro.. How does that feel? I find this funny... that everyone who was a newbie before and asked for help (and got it), in their time, now tries to brush off other people, as if they were never in their shoes

Don't know, but seems kind of unfair to blame everyone for DIY (if they are aware of the risks and accept them) on every corner.. even though you've been there yourself, most certainly..

Sorry, I didn't mean to be condasending. Just offering advice that if the data really mattered then it would be better to send/take a pro with the appropriate equipment before the drive got much worse.

DIY of course has its place, but one has to know when to stop and seek assistance.

Your comments are taken on board and noted, thank you.

[northwind]

your operating systems in the way- best to use hardware imager such as deepspar or atola.... etc. they read past bad sectors then come back and retry.

Exactly, but the more he hammers away with DIY, the more degraded the drive will become and chances of recovery are getting slimmer and slimmer.

I'm sure the same could have been said about your first posts on this board... that you should give up DIY and send it to a pro.. How does that feel? I find this funny... that everyone who was a newbie before and asked for help (and got it), in their time, now tries to brush off other people, as if they were never in their shoes

Don't know, but seems kind of unfair to blame everyone for DIY (if they are aware of the risks and accept them) on every corner.. even though you've been there yourself, most certainly..

It is fair to blame DIY when it involves high risk of sensitive data loss. It is always your data=your choice, but when it involves other people's data, then i think there is absolutely NO room for DIY.

Every experienced tech has been a newbie once, but as pcimage says, you have to draw the line and know when to stop. I have experimented with hundreds of drives in the last few years before I feel certain I will not ruin client's data. After that I started recovering live client cases. Until this point, I outsourced everything. Even now, when I don't feel sure about my self, I seek assistance from other pro's. It's better to gain less (or nothing, or even ...) instead of gambling.

Just my two cents to this conversation, nothing implied about you, electroglow.

[electroglow]

your operating systems in the way- best to use hardware imager such as deepspar or atola.... etc. they read past bad sectors then come back and retry.

Exactly, but the more he hammers away with DIY, the more degraded the drive will become and chances of recovery are getting slimmer and slimmer.

I'm sure the same could have been said about your first posts on this board... that you should give up DIY and send it to a pro.. How does that feel? I find this funny... that everyone who was a newbie before and asked for help (and got it), in their time, now tries to brush off other people, as if they were never in their shoes

Don't know, but seems kind of unfair to blame everyone for DIY (if they are aware of the risks and accept them) on every corner.. even though you've been there yourself, most certainly..

It is fair to blame DIY when it involves high risk of sensitive data loss. It is always your data=your choice, but when it involves other people's data, then i think there is absolutely NO room for DIY.

Every experienced tech has been a newbie once, but as pcimage says, you have to draw the line and know when to stop. I have experimented with hundreds of drives in the last few years before I feel certain I will not ruin client's data. After that I started recovering live client cases. Until this point, I outsourced everything. Even now, when I don't feel sure about my self, I seek assistance from other pro's. It's better to gain less (or nothing, or even ...) instead of gambling.

Just my two cents to this conversation, nothing implied about you, electroglow.

It seems to me, that You are slightly missing the point here and smoothly bending it to your own agenda.. We can all agree, that what you are saying makes perfect sense and is widely accepted, noone would argue about it. But the case, here, is that the OP is already aware of the implied risks and accepts them completely, as he is not in the position of spending $ for a DR office. So, frankly, what use for him is the DIY rhetoric? It makes no difference to him. He is doing DIY intentionally, he has no other choice. That is why only telling him a 100 times something he already knows and agrees to - gets him nowhere, really.. If you want to help - do it, if not - let's be fair.. try to resist the temptation of posting bald statements that aren't helping the OP to get any more closer to the solution to his problem..

I am sure we all had our share of moments, when you ask for help and someone throws a "take it to a pro" in your face, in situations where it's so obviously inapplicable (when you are fully aware of the dangers and undergoing intentional DIY)..

[northwind]

Sorry but I stand my position there. Been there, done that: "your advice has caused my drive to be fully non-operational", even though my advice was something else and even though I have previously applied the "DIY rhetorics" (as you call them).

I agree with you, though; if someone wants to help, they're free to.