Hello all,

I have a Samsung HD103SJ that stopped working a while ago. Was not seen in Windows. I did some research and found some things that I could test here. I found the PCB to be bad. I bought another PCB and had the ROM switched out. Put it back together and much to my surprise and delight, it worked. Well, it worked for a few minutes and then I started to smell something burnt. I unplugged the computer completely. I then checked everything and there is no sign (at least to me anyway) of what that smell could have been. Anyways, restarted the computer and that's when the hard drive would spin up, then make around 15 clicks and then stop completely. Will not show up in BIOS and therefore not in Windows either. I thought that maybe the PCB went bad again and bought another one, replaced the ROM and sadly, still the same thing - spins up, around 15 clicks and then stops completely.

Any ideas from this point? While it would be nice to get some data off (I have a complete backup from 3 months prior so at least I have most of my data), it's just not worth the $800 to $2,000 or so to send to a Data Recovery Specialist. If I did not have the almost complete backup, then that would be a different story.

Anything I can try from here on my own or is this drive 'toast'?

Funny thing, on one of my computers, I can install this drive and the computer will still boot up even though this drive is faulty. On my other computer, it stalls (gets hung up) in the BIOS and will not pass the BIOS stage. This is just my data drive not my OS drive. Not sure why or even if that makes a difference.

Thanks,
Todd

You might have got a slightly different PCB then the original and that could have overvolted the Pre-amp inside the drive. I think the drive is completely dead, you might as well get a new drive.

Shane

Could we see photos of both PCBs?

Did the original PCB still spin up the drive?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I do not have the original PCB anymore. No, the drive did not spin up with the original PCB.

Pre-amp - not sure what that is. So, the heads being replaced would make no difference? Not that that would be price feasible anyway.

As stated above, I do thinketh that my drive is beyond repair.

Thanks,
Todd

Buy a same hard drive from market and change the PCB one more time in Samsung Diagram of PCB must be same you need additional software like STR to rewrite the ROM.