Hi,

I have an old Samsung SP1654N HDD which I have used over the years to archive some older design work. Recently when using it (via an external caddy), I could hear it power up and spin, but Windows 7 would not recognise the drive and let me access it all.

I have confirmed the caddy and cables are ok, by being able to access other older IDE drives using it.

I took a look at the PCB on the HDD and noticed this issue (please see photo). I'm not versed in PCB architecture so have no idea what this missing element is, and what it would affect. I tried the HDD again this morning before leaving this post and this time I was hearing a loud ticking noise, almost like the 'arm' which reads the data was flicking back and forth.



I would very much like to rescue the data off of this HDD and get it backed up elsewhere, so I've been on the search for an identical drive and found a couple on EBAY which are untested, but could solve my PCB issue pretty cheaply (£10 ish).

Does anybody have any thoughts on my problem, and what could be the best way to resolve it (if it's indeed possible).

Thanks for your time.

cheers

Sam

Best part is not to power the drive any more, since there is a part missing, see if its inside the caddy or lying around where you first opened it. It might be very small. If you can't find it, then find the exact same model online and then locate the missing component and replace it on the drive you want to fix. Hopefully that will do the trick. Can you upload an image of the whole drive board?

Shane

Hi,

Is it possible to replace the entire pcb? rather than that component?

I'll take a photo of the entire pcb in the morning when I have some decent light and post it here.

cheers

Sam

Here is a photo of your board:
http://content.onliner.by/forum/69c/61c ... d3cd54.jpg

Here is a similar (but not identical) drive:

The missing component appears to be a capacitor. It is in parallel with the smaller capacitor.

One end of the capacitor is connected to ground. I'm wondering whether it is the charge pump capacitor for the voice coil drive circuitry. If so, then its absence would have some impact on the VCM, but I don't know whether it would account for the observed symptoms. AIUI, in normal operation the charge pump supply voltage should be around 18V or so.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks for finding a photo of my board.

I imagine that missing capacitor would cause issues? I see you mention it might not be the causing the issues I have, but I assume it can't be good that it's missing.

Looks like it's worth finding a cheap replacement PCB and seeing if it makes any difference.

If you change the PCB, you will have to chance the ROM chip is well, simply swapping boards will not work, there is a small chip on the board that had drive information to start it up, each drive has different software. And from the looks of it, it looks like this drive might not have a ROM chip... So I think replacing the missing component is the best Idea.

If you look at the original picture, you can see that its not connected to the ground, so it might be something else.

Actually, the photo doesn't show where the capacitor is connected to, but it stands to reason that it would follow the example in my photo. A quick continuity test with a multimeter should tell us one way or the other.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Is there anyway to confirm that this drive doesn't have a ROM chip?

Yes, look at all the chips, look at the part numbers printed on them, and then Google for what they are. There are not many chips on there, total time max should be 10 mins

If this is your board ...

http://content.onliner.by/forum/69c/61c ... d3cd54.jpg

... then it has no external flash memory.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

This drive doesn't have an external "ROM", it's masked in the MCU.

If you're lucky, the version is on the drive label (e.g. BV100-50) and you can find another drive with the same fw version, there aren't that many for these drives.

Of course this assumes that the PCB is actually at fault, but the clicking noise doesn't bode well.

Happy to take a look if you wanna send it in

_________________
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