I was gone for a few days and I left my PC on, which happens often without any problems. This time though my PC crashed and it soon turned out that one of my two RAID 0 Seagate ST3500410AS (500GB) hard disks was either not being recognized or recognized as DAMAGED (according to the Gigabyte/jmicron RAID controller) resulting in a hanged boot (since no OS was found). Sometimes the HDD is recognized, but then the boot sequence would end in the BusyBox console which indicates that the boot of Ubuntu failed. Starting from a live CD and analyzing the disks would show that only 1 disk is detected (see the attached Boot Info Script log). Both HDDs sound the same so I think there is no damage on the inside, which makes me think that the PCB of the faulty HDD is damaged.

I made several pictures of both HDDs, and to me it looks like that the faulty HDD has some burn marks. What should I do? Are these PCBs easy to remove (I think I'll need a Torx T6 screwdriver first)? I was thinking about switching the PCB of the faulty HDD with the working HDD's PCB. Would that work? And if that works, how do I get a new PCB to replace the damaged one?

Wrong. If HDD spins up ("they sound the same") then 99.99% the problem is not with the pcb


I do not think there is some problem with these marks. It looks like corrosion to me, but pic is not very clear, so..


No it would not work. These pcbs contain unique adaptive data on them, so swapping the pcb would not help you at all. As I've said, problem most likely is somewhere else.

The drive needs to be accurately diagnosed. It would help if you could provide some terminal output, but judging by your description it does not seem like youre too familiar with that kind of stuff.

My advice is to hand drive to someone who can accurately diagnose drive.

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Interesting the hear that you think it is not a PCB problem. Which terminal output do you need to identify the (severity of the) problem? I can boot into Ubuntu via a Live CD and run terminal commands from there, or I might be able to squeeze out some interesting info using the limited commands that BusyBox offers.

No, when i said terminal I didn't mean the ubuntu terminal, but in your case it is Hyperterminal.

I dont want to get deeper into this, it sounds dangerous to me, even one-letter command in terminal can instantly KILL your drive and make it FUBAR.

I suggest you contact a pro in your area who can safely diagnose drive.

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Aah thanks for the clearification. I won't be doing that indeed.

I have a vague idea that the HDD broke due to too much power caused by nearby lightning, but I'm not sure as I was not around when this happened. Given all the above do you have any idea on what caused the HDD to break down? Both drives were in good condition and never showed any problems before.

Well no-one can tell for sure how this problem occured, at least until the drive is being diagnosed. Then, MAYBE someone can say how this could have happened.

Sometimes we only see the result of a problem and not the root of it.

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