Hello,
First time here, I need help. I have a: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9,
120 GB ATA/133 HDD, M8FYB. It appears as if the board has a burnt chip. The chip with the word "Smooth" on it has some oxidization. I've tried to plug the hdd as a slave in a working pc and in an external enclosure but the hdd won't power on (I don't hear any spinning).
I really need the files on the drive. I have pictures from the birth of my son and the past 15 months of his development on the drive. Is there anything I can do to fix this or is there anyone in the Edmonton, Canada area able to fix this? I am pretty desparate here.

Ok, I'll reply to my own topic. I've read the maxtor sticky posted above and found that I should try a PCB swap. I've ordered a board from the site listed in the sticky. Now my question is, can the appropriate screwdriver be purchased at most hardware stores or do I need to special order that from somewhere? Also, will I need to solder anything?

Just a regular T8 screwsdriver. You can buy it at any Home Depot or Canadian Tire.
PCB swap should work.
If not - the preamp chip on the head stack got fried and that'd be real problem. Let me know how it goes, I might be able to help.

Thanks Starling. I was going to try the pcb swap first. If that didn't work, I was going to pm you to see if you could assist. I'll post back once I try the swap.

So I received my replacement board from Malaysia in great time (4 days). After I installed the board I went to plug the hdd in as a slave in my PC, and no luck. I did not hear any spinning, the PC did not recognize that there was a drive nothing. After looking at the card, I noticed that the card is not quite the same as the one I replaced.
Here are some differences:
Old card:
agere Ardent C8-C1
Samsung 428 (?)
Smooth L7250E

New card:
agere Ardent C8-C1
Hynix 535A
Smooth L7250E

The barcode number is the same: M8FYB
The S/N was identical (at least according to the website) except that I ordered a 160GB card and my drive is 120GB.

Is this the correct card?
Is my hdd toast?

Please help!

Thanks in advance.

Maybe u can get another problem in some situations when spindle controller, was burned, some times damaged the preamplifier circuit too , wich its inside on your Hard Disk, i hope no, but some times this happend

why dont u replace the SMOOTH <spindle motor controller> with the donor pcb .

Rameez,

He Is Not a Chip Level Technician .He Even Wants To Know About Buying a Screwdriver Understand His Issue

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Yes, replacing chips on pcbs is way out of my league. I've sent the drive off to a member on this site. Hopefully he has some success.

hey i had the same problem too.....wonder who can help me.... please. i really need those data back.

my maxtor hard disc crash....
the situation is like this

i had a virus infection on my window at first. and i need to reformat it. but i wanted the data back. so i connect my hard disc to my friends pc to recover those data. but. once i plug into my freinds pc. the hard disc electric board burn off i think. weird smell coming out.

now... i cant even detect my hard drive. help plz. i need consultant. and i need the data back urgently. i am a student and i coudnt afford to those company that recover data back for such a large amount of money. plz.

You need to find donor PCB from another drive. It should be of the same family(DiamondMax Plus 9 for example) and main chip should be of the same type(Ardent C8-C1 for example).
If it works - great. If not - then you've got a fried preamp like in the case above and it's not something you can do by yourself...

thanks for replying my msg. . .
but i really dont know how to do it. need some expert to fix it for me. anyone here will guide me or help me?

You don't know how to unscrew the PCB?

Just wanted to follow up on this. I worked on this drive. It was burnt preamp indeed. Headswap worked OK.