I posted a request for help with a Samsung external hard drive, I was advised to repost and with lots of photos and explanation of the problem.

I have uploaded some photos which I hope are helpful. The hard drive comes out of a Freecom external drive and was purchased in the UK. The drive will no longer spin, and the blue light does not show. I suspect a power surge or I mixed up the power cables.....but it is an old drive 2006 which has worked well. I bought a C2G / Cables to Go 30504 USB 2.0 to IDE or Serial ATA Drive Adapter, but the drive still wont fire up, although the adapter works fine with some spare hard drives I have.

The PCB does not show burn marks anywhere near the TVS Diodes.

I need to buy a multi tester tomorrow

Look forward to any advice or comments thankyou

see the 2 resistors marked 0 in the second to bottom picture? Try putting a pair of tweezers each one them to "short" or bypass them when it is plugged in to see if they are open circuit or not. Also, not sure if the large black component on the extreme left of the same picture is a fuse or not. it could be open.

I think I have a few of those drives so I can maybe compare components when I get home in a day or so

HaQue, Thankyou for your help, I bought a multitester today, so tried this out.....didn't I didn't know what to look for when testing with tweezers to see how they shorted or not. Hope the phots help

Cheers!

It's a TVS and the middle picture seems to be showing that it's shorted - needs to be double-checked IMHO, if the OP is taking the risks of DIY.

Vulcan, thanks for your input - Its a TVS as you say - I showed the relevant photos to the suspected problems. I need to work out what is the best solution to recovering the data, I read how others have had similar problems and were able find help in the forum. I tried to follow the advice on their posts but I need to confirm the right steps to take before I do anything drastic

well you could replace the TVS Diodes with the same type as a start.. or read up, as I think I have read you can remove them to ONLY copy data, not a long term solution.. if this is indeed your problem

I think I would remove them to copy data, the drive I would scrap. Is that all that is required - remove the one that shorts?

I removed the TVS Diode which was shorting, the hard drive starts up now...but has three clicks after which it stops spinning and does not show up on the computer

70% Headstack is gone.

30% PCB is gone.

Game over for DIY in any case.

Can also be :

70 % headstack is gone

25% PCB is gone.

5% firmware problem.

Game over for DIY anyway.

Agree......I took apart another Samsung hard drive very similar construction, i bought it just to see what goes on inside....this too was clicking. I looked at the heads......they looked like they touch the disc, but cannot really see at this scale.

I thought this video was interesting but, but finding a donor head assembly for my 250 hard drive is a long shot. So it looks like professional data recovery is the only thing left

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9AoMeHRIPU

If you can get a terminal report from the drive, that may provide more information. There are instructions for other Samsung models at The HDD Oracle.

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