I am not a happy person right now. I stupidly haven't backed up for ages (mainly since I reorganised my office a few months back) and today my Maxtor USB drive failed.

Eventually I had to slide the drive out of the USB enclosure and I was happy to discover it was just an ordinary Maxtor Hard Drive. I thought, great, maybe it was just the USB enclosure's electronics that were playing up, so I connected it up directly to my PC.

I then switch on my PC. What's that awful smell? Ahhh smoke!
So I hastily switch the PC off.

On examination, one of the chips with the label "SMOOTH" has burned out. This seems to have happened to at least one other person on these boards. Perhaps the PCB was already on its way out, and that was causing the problems in the first place.

Here you can see the damage circled in white.



And here is the top of the drive with serial numbers etc.


So after reading around a bit (and also kicking and punching things in my office to let off some steam) I discovered that it was possible to swap this PCB with another one from the same drive type.

So I have ordered another 250GB Maxline Plus II with the hopes of doing this. It looks like I will also need some Torx screwdrivers (why can't they just use Phillips head?).

I just thought I'd share my pain with you all.

Your drive does not have a ROM, so u can replace with any PCB from same model.

It should work, unless you have bad preamp.

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

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That sounds promising. It looks like it should just disconnect without any de-soldering required.
I won't be able to tell until I can get a Torx screwdriver of exactly the right size.

Yes, it just unscrews.

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

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

Just make sure your donor board has the same CPU type(Ardent C8-C1 for example).