Howdy, I have an older Seagate ST1000DM003 1TB drive that finally died and if possible want to get some data off it. I believe I may have found the culprit, an extremely high esr smd electrolytic capacitor. Don't work much with smd stuff and can't figger out the value for this thing. It spins much better after a trip to the freezer for a few hours which further leads to my suspicions on a bad cap. So, if anyone has a schematic or can identify this bugger, it would be much appreciated!
Merry Christmas,
Tom

It's a 12V TVS diode.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Ya, I took it off last nite and tested it as a 12V zener diode. I figgered it was either a diode or cap. Are there schematics for these things? The drive slowed down over time, took longer and longer to write/read. Dunno if there are common failures with these drives, was hoping it was a cap...

Thanks!

[quote="tbone8"]Howdy, I have an older Seagate ST1000DM003 1TB drive that finally died and if possible want to get some data off it. I believe I may have found the culprit, an extremely high esr smd electrolytic capacitor. Don't work much with smd stuff and can't figger out the value for this thing. It spins much better after a trip to the freezer for a few hours which further leads to my suspicions on a bad cap. So, if anyone has a schematic or can identify this bugger, it would be much appreciated!
Merry Christmas,
Tom

Well,
A Trip To a Freezer is nonsense spread by fools .

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Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

I checked that board with my thermal camera and that zener gets quite toasty and is the only really hot spot on the board. I removed it and wrangled in a through hole zener and now the puter recognizes the drive but asks that it be formatted so on the right track. Something something is drawing down on that 12v, just gotta find it but it ain't gonna be easy...

It appears that your PCB may have sustained an overvoltage on its 12V input. The only other semi that is directly connected to the 12V supply is the SMOOTH motor controller. Is that a burn spot in the middle?

Alternatively, is it possible that your 12V input is presently too high and is/was causing the TVS diode to conduct?

That said, it would be unusual for the drive to still spin up if the motor controller had been compromised. Something doesn't make sense to me ...

I think it's more likely that the drive has an internal fault, and that your troubleshooting has introduced an unrelated fault.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.