Hello hddgurus!

I´m new here and this my first post.

A few months ago i tried to connect my Maxtor hdd (internal) during the system was running. Now I know that it wasn’t the best idea. After connecting, the disk was dead. No motor spinning, no head movement, no sound.

I did some research and found a page where I read about the possibility of swapping the board. After I got a matching drive with exactly the same number (6y200P0062811) I tried this and the motor start spinning.

But windows doesn’t recognise the disk and it makes a sound I never heard. It’s not clicking more a beep or something. Please listen by yourself:

http://www.

What do you think is wrong with this device? The data is not that important and I’m a student. So no chance for professional rescue. I studied that entire data rescue staff at youtube from Scott Moulton and already bought a few broken drives to train my skills. But I want to be sure what is wrong before I open the drive.

Any idea?

Thank you in advance!
Kaiserimweb

Guten tag Herr Kaiser,

Sounds like Head damage!
replacing them is difficult. If you have not done this before, chances of recovery are very.. very.. very low
Also, there is a good chance that you may have platter damage.
Sorry for the bad news.

Check that the new PCB has the same Main Chip (e.g. Ardent C8-C1)

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@quasimodo: I watched Moultons and Salvation manual on the web. Here in this forum was also a topic about headswapping. If there is no other chance, i will practise with other drives i already bought on ebay and give it a try. I also think about building a glove box. There are some howtos online as well. Do think it could work?

@pcimage: I checked that chip. All codes exept the last two numbers are matching:

Matching:
agere
Ardent C8-C1
04111300
Ardent-C8C1-840UK

NOT MATCHING:

0416T vs. 0502T
6023843 vs. 6520543

@all: In the meantime i tried to do a hot pcb swap with windows power management. It worked, but as a resultat i only hear the same sound and see the same disk behaviour

What do you suggest?

Kaiser, if your data is not important keep experimenting, the worst thing will be a bunch of drives KO. I can't give any suggestion without seeing the drive and making measurements, but don't go further experimenting if you want to send the disk to a pro (maybe you can't afford this so maybe this may not apply to you) for recovery, because in that case the price is much higher.
Anyway no youtube video or stuff dowloaded from the internet can help you anymore at this point, no one will train you in H/S or P/S or DR itself.
This sound could be caused by dead headstack, mechanical malfunction, malfunction in R/C or (rare) critical FW corruption. Also, PCB not matching can give this result. Can't tell you more.

Hello,

Possibly, your preamp is dead, caused by the power spike.
You can measure this with dmm.

Also you can check the pcb and preamp (vice-versa) on any type and any capacity maxtor.
You only need to watch the 5 letter code on the pcb's label, close to the power connector.

If your data is not important, and the pcb swap not helps, i suggest, forget the drive.
It will never operate again stable after the HE....

Regards,
Janos

Many answers! Thank you.

Yes, it’s just "nice to have" data. Pictures, Music... Given this and a students budget the best way is to try it by myself.

Furthermore, I really like technical stuff like this and to get familiar with new things.
I often read here in other posts, that people don’t see big chances for "trained newbie’s" to do a successful head swap.

What do you think is the point? Is it because of the on/offloading problem? Dust is no problem because of the university clean room or glove box.

Simply we have other things to do. If you want to get personal training ask - and pay, like university, you know. Someone will.