Just fried my Hard Disk and VERY annoyed by it. Luckily most of my stuff is backed up and other drives, but would like to get back my bookmarks and other things, or get the drive working again as it was really expensive when I bought it. Still worked fine until my little bobo....

One of my other drives failed to start, damn thing always messing around, should have replaced it long ago, but never got around to it, so I was disconnecting the power connector when there must have been a short or something. Don't know what happened but shortly after there was several popping sounds and then burnt PCB smell. I know my hard drives had it.

I had 3 other drives and luckily they are okay, different power rail completely I think, but to my horror, found out my MAIN HDD is fried.

I have uploaded some images for a better understanding.

What I really want to know is will the Pre-amp inside the drive be toast. Not sure on this type of drive and where is the ROM chip, if there is one.

As you can see the Motor controller got whacked, even when I had a heat sink on it. Took it off for the images.

You might be lucky with this. I think the ROM is the 8pin chip near the Controller. Not Sure as I don't do much in the way of HDD's but reason I am replying is that I may have some of these drives in systems I am replacing.

I wouldn't worry about keeping it regardless of the expense when new, as it is getting a bit old anyway and I am wary of 12 year old drives..

You may get away with a board swap, I am not sure if the rom needs to be swapped though, someone with more experience can add this.

PCB layout - Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 ATA/133:
http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.php?f=112&t=117&p=137

Measure the resistance between Ground and -5V with the PCB on and off the drive.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

No ROM.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Well, no external ROM anyway

Sometimes they put one at U401 for "last minute" FW updates, but this one doesn't have one.

@OP... You have PM

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

@ShaneWard, I see that the SMOOTH chip is blistered on the motor side. Perhaps you should measure the resistances of the motor windings. It could be that motor problems are relatively common in this model (I've seen a few threads that would suggest this).

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

No, I don't think its the motor. The hard drive was up and running when the short happened.

I was foolishly trying to get a second hard disk to fire up with the power on. What I guess happened is the 12v pin touched the second hard drives ground cable pin and send the 12v through the ground cable to the first hard disk which was running. Then since the first hard disk was getting 5v through the 5v pin, 12v through the 12V pin and 12v through the ground pins and then it grounded the power through the case and the SMOOTH chip fried, or weekended. I don't think the 5V pin was overvolted, I think 12V went through one of the negative cables into the first drive

The spark on the second drive was only for a 0.5 second but it could have damaged the chip and caused it to burn out.

But the drive motor could have been damaged now I think about it

Shane

Resistance on Motor points ABC are 004.6 if I done it correctly on the meter. My other working Maxtor reads as 04.37. Not sure what that means???

resistance on the -5v pin from what I understand from the diagram is 10.63 with board off the drive 150.5 with board on the drive.

Edit, just put a different Maxtor pcb onto the drive covering the contacts of the main HSA and the drive spins fine, so nothing wrong with the motor. I don't think I will test the preamp this way incase the PCB does something to the heads or wipes something.

Been looking for a replacement board. Not easy, if someone has something like this in stock it would be good, I beleave all the details are needed or not.. Not sure how to look.

I found this board on E-bay, would it work?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Maxtor-Diamond- ... _768wt_937

Yes it will.

Would that be 10 Kohm and 150K?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

It might be, not sure on that... I just wrote what the tool told me.

Thanks for the info on the pcb. I'll keep that one in mind

So I guess the Pre-amp is okay, otherwise it would have read 0.0?

If the motor test points are reading 4.37 when the PCB is on the drive, then the units must be ohms.

My DiamondMax Plus 9 PCB reads 192 ohms for the -5V resistance when the PCB is off the drive, so it appears that yours must be reading 150 ohms, not 150K. This means that your preamp must be reading 10 ohms. However, a 10 ohm load on a -5V supply would draw 0.5A and dissipate 2.5W, so this would suggest that your preamp is dead.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

The PCB is reading 151.0ohms when off the drive and the same when its on the drive. with no change.

I've done more testing on the PCB board with the power connected as I think it might be giving me messed up readings. It's dead. here are the reading on some of the components.

+3.3V TP = 000.6 mV
-5V TP = 004.1mV
Vcore = 000.0 on lower side of chip 000.6mV on the other

All other contacts are in the mV range, hardly any current the PCB is completely toast.

Is there a way to test the preamp without using the PCB board, like using the contacts or something. Not sure if I am hitting the right pins. or the pins are correct for this type of drive.

Shane

All that you can deduce from your measurements is that the preamp's resistance is very high, ie it is definitely not shorted. For example, if the preamp's resistance were 15K, then your PCB-on-drive reading would have fallen by 1% to 149.5 ohms.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thats what I thought. I even did I DIODE test on the pins on the underside of the drive as explained on another forum. The only sure way is to hook up a new PCB and see what happens.

DIODE test results (Was to put red probe on Grd Pin and black probe on -5v pin)

Its averages around 120.0 (nf)

Testing on the +5 reads as 1.399 (uf) and the number continues to climb with red probe on the +5 rail and black on gnd. If I reversed these the meter beeps at me.

Thanks for your help so far fzabkar, learning new things this week

Shane

An update for all you wonderful DR people, Just got the new PCB board in today, very fast, quite impressed and attached it to the hdd with the head contacts covered as in the image above, then the drive spin okay.

Good news, Now the pre-amp test

Then I re-screwed the PCB with nothing covered and the hard drive made the nice few clicks and then wentready... WOW.... managed to get it working fully again.

Huge thanks for all the people who recommended the new PCB. Another successful dead drive recovery.

Shane