It happened at the same time as my power supply failing so I'm assuming they are related. It makes absolutely no noise and I feel no vibration when I give it power. From some extensive googling it seems like my problem might lie with the TVS diodes however unlike many other cases I've seen mine do not have any visible burn marks or damage of any kind. There is a very tiny amount of discoloration on two of the ovals that make the contacts but I doubt that would matter.

I do not know how to solder but if it means avoiding paying out the a** for professional repair/recovery I'd be willing to learn in the event I need to transfer the rom chip or whatnot. One question I had is could I just remove all the diodes just to see if it worked or would that damage it? I know it wouldn't have the overvolt protection but I'm only trying to get it working long enough to transfer my data off of it.

I'm linking to an external gallery for pictures so it doesn't clutter up the page. Hope that is ok. http://imgur.com/a/vD9TK

This Diod looks suspicions, but I am not 100%sure. If that is a Diod, then the fuses would have shorted out also. The diod will need to be removed, and the fuses shorted to allow power through. However, I would not recommended and circite board swap or ROM swap if you do not know how to do it. A Professional assistance should not cost much in this case.

Shane

How would I go about shorting the fuses?

A fuse is just a solid link, that is designed to "blow" at a certain specification. so you can just replace it with a wire, but you remove the protection it gives and whatever problem blew the fuse in the first place could now damage other things. The "problem" could have been an external source, so you may be lucky and the wire will work long enough to get your DATA, if it is the issue.

So, if you have a multimeter, then check the continuity of the fuses. If you don't know what this means, then figure out how to set your multimeter to continuity test. If you don't have a DMM(digital multiMeter) then you can get a cheap one that will suffice for less than AU$30. Now, touch the 2 (red & black) probes together. it should give an alarm. The same alarm should sound when you test the fuse. Put a probe on each end of the fuse.

if any fuses are open, you won't hear an alarm and the fuse is "blown". Now turn your attention to the Diodes

The diode highlighted by ShaneWard is the 5V TVS diode. The component to the right of it (KVP) is the 12V TVS diode.

The two leftmost zero-ohm resistors ("fuses") are associated with the 5V diode, while the two on the right are associated with the 12V diode.

ISTM that the leftmost fuse looks blistered, but that could be just the lighting.

IME in this forum and others, flowing blobs of solder over each of the open fuses, and snipping the shorted diode, is all that is required. In fact I recall that someone who tried to swap the flash memory chip (in this forum) only suceeded in damaging it, with disastrous consequences. If you intend to take the DIY route, and if you are a novice, then IMHO the path of least risk would be to bridge the fuse.

That said, you must ensure that your PSU is good, otherwise a second overvoltage will kill your now unprotected drive.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Ok I got some better pictures of the fuses you guys are talking about. http://imgur.com/a/jzfPu/

I did replace my PSU and I'm 99% certain that was the cause because I leave my PC on 24/7 and one day I came home and it was off and wouldn't boot. However when I replaced the PSU and hard drives it was fine so from what I can tell the PSU failed and blew some fuses/diodes on both of my HDDs. Somehow the rest of my system was fine.

Now that you can see the fuses better can you tell for sure this problem is only related to the PCB or is there another mechanical problem that could cause the drive to just not do anything? If it is for sure the PCB then I found a site that will switch my ROM chip with a new PCB for a flat fee http://www.donordrives.com/ I'd rather just have them do it so I don't have to go out and buy soldering equipment and then possibly break my PCB or something. Anyone know if that is a reputable site?

They do look bad, but measure them and the diodes before you do anything.

See http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/TVS_diode_FAQ.html

As for Donor Drives, I no longer recommend them. Instead I would go to either of the following suppliers:

http://www.onepcbsolution.com/
http://www.hdd-parts.com/

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Do either of those stores switch the firmware for me though? I'd rather pay the extra $20 to have Donor Drives do it for me unless they are a really bad company or something.

I borrowed a multimeter and tried measuring them before but I didn't get where I was supposed to put the leads on the diode to measure it. I tried putting it on the top of the metal part next to the black plastic thing and that got me a measurement but if I moved it a bit it would start fluctuating a lot and beeping. No idea what that means. I guess I could borrow it again but I'm gonna need a more dumbed down/specific explanation of what I'm supposed to be doing.

The quick way to see if these are the problems is, snip of the diod I highlighted in red. You won't need it if its blown, and find a way to connect the two sides of the fuses together to allow power through. Normally soldering a blob across the contacts would work, but you can allways take it to your local electrcal shop who does soldering and they can do it for you.

Posting this again because I don't think my last one went through. Do either of those companies do the ROM transfer for you? Because if not I'd rather pay the extra $20 just to have Donor Drives do it. Why have you stopped recommending them?

I borrowed a multimeter and tried measuring the diodes before but I had no idea what I'm doing. I'd seen that guide somewhere else and tried following it but I still didn't get where I was supposed to put the leads on the diode. I tried putting them on the top of the metal part right where it meets the black plastic bit and I got a stable reading in certain places but if I moved a millimeter it would start wildly fluctuating and beeping so I have no idea what I was doing wrong. Could you elaborate on exactly how you measure them and the fuses?


What exactly is "snipping the diode"? Do I just cut/take off the black part or do I actually have to cut the metal piece under/inside the plastic? I don't really know what it looks like under the plastic thing.

Both companies transfer the chips for free.

You can judge Donor Drives by these threads:
viewtopic.php?t=25524&start=20
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/29438 ... ment-again

I don't buy the lame "email template" excuse. It certainly wouldn't stand up in court.

There is one other similar example, but I'll have to look for it.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

WolfyB, we are not a bad company at all. Judge by yourself, and read those posts if you would like. There is positive information about us everywhere, including nearly 4000 feedbacks on ebay within just 2 years and several positive online reviews.

fzabkar continuously misrepresents us on forums based on two "not-so-pleasant" experiences with 2 of our past clients, where the whole negative experience was based on a more severe failure diagnostics than client expected. Those issues have been long resolved with clients, and they do not have any outstanding complaints - PM them if you would like. Those clients from both posts were never lied to, nor did we over charge them or incorrectly evaluated their hard drive failures. We do not offer any sort of dishonest or unfaithful service, and we highly value our clients. Almost every single member of this community has been our client at some point or is our client to this day. I don't want to give names, but I hope that some of my current or past clients will step up and comment here if they see this post.

The other 2 companies fzabkar refers to do not accept returns, service way less clients than we do, and therefore haven't experienced any online review outrage besides negative eBay feedbacks.

Although fzabkar online misrepresentation of our company doesn't hurt much of our business, it is very unpleasant to see a wrongful image being formed in this community. I will start asking some of our clients to come to this forum and leave a review of their experience to show you who we truly are, without one person continuously bashing us for god knows what reason. He is a great member of the community and provides valuable info to people, but he never been our client and is not a data recovery expert.

So I was just looking at your website and to just make sure I'm understanding this right. I can purchase a replacement PCB and get a free adaptation with that purchase so that I can send in my broken one and you'll switch over the rom and whatnot and then send me back the working PCB all for just the price of the replacement PCB?

Although I have never used their ROM xfer service, I have used donordrives on a number of occasions for parts and found them to be very helpful and efficient.

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Exactly. We have an option, where you pay $60 total, and that will include diagnostics, replacement part, adaptation, and data access test. If you want to do that, just go our website and click on the banner on first page. You don't have to pay us a penny in advance, only after we successfully finish your service.

PS: As of last month, if there is another failure besides PCB, we offer our clients to reverse ROM transfer service that has been done, so that they don't pay us $60 and can contact a professional data recovery provider who will replace the PCB along with fixing other failures.

Sounds very fair indeed.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Same here.

Data recovery is not an exact science and at times failures are more complex, often related to one another. It is not a surprise to encounter additional issues to just a PCB issue.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

It is just not always Sunday. One thing are expectations, another is reality. What else ?

I would just like to chime in about my PCB experience, and Donor Drives in particular. I will try to keep this the short version, lol. I spilled water on my laptop, and could no longer turn it on, or access the hard drive from an enclosure connected to another laptop. I asked two of the IT guys at my work if there was any way to access the data from the drive (shame on me for not backing up frequently), and they gave me a couple of ideas, but nothing worked. One of the tips was to swap a PCB from a matching hard drive. I ordered one with the same drive number, but that did not work. After doing some more research and digging, I discovered it is also necessary to swap ROM chips if you find a matching board.

Here's where my praise for Donor Drives comes in. I contact four PCB suppliers to see if they had a matching board. Those companies were:

Donor Drives.com
Effective Electronics.com
One PCB Solution.com
HDD-Parts.com

Of these four companies, Donor Drives was the ONLY company to even respond to my inquiry as to whether or not they could supply a matching PCB board. I was leaning towards them anyway, but they made it a no-brainer when they were the only company to even acknowledge me. I sent my board to them for a replacement, as well as to have the ROM chip swapped as well. I sent it out on a Tuesday, they had it back on its way to me on Friday. Very pleased! I received the new board and immediately hooked it up in the enclosure to the other laptop. IT WORKED!!! I had seriously come to terms with either losing all of my data forever, or paying several hundred or thousand dollars if I wanted it bad enough. $60 and a couple of days, and all is well! They kept me informed and were very helpful. I would not hesitate to use them again, and will refer people to them if I suspect they are facing similar hard drive issues.

I have no trouble finding the PCB that you wanted:

http://search.store.yahoo.net/yhst-4446 ... ion.com%2F
http://search.store.yahoo.net/yhst-1443 ... rts.com%2F

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A backup a day keeps DR away.