I'm new to this forum, so please be patient.

I had the misfortune of having a power supply failure that sent a surge throughout my computer. It appears to have fried my hard drives (a Western Digital EIDE drive that has my OS and my programs and a pair of Western Digital SATA drives that were set up as a RAID 1 array [a mirror array] for my data). None of them spins up any longer, so I cannot access them at all at this point.

It seems likely the power surge burnt out the logic boards, so I'd like to at least try finding replacement boards before paying the big bucks for professional data recovery. Is there a reasonable way to do this? I can't find anything online about a market for used logic boards.

For what it's worth, my EIDE drive has the following specs.

Model: WD50000AAJB-00YRA0
DCM: HARNNT2MAB

The logic board says: 2060-701508-001 REV A

Can you upload photos of your PCBs?

Do your faulty drives shut down your power supply?

Can you measure a short between either of your +5V or +12V rails and ground?

I don't yet have the correct size Torx screw driver to remove the boards (they're on order). I can tell you that there is no evident damage on the side that I can see without removing the board. No burn marks or other discoloring of the board.




No. They simply do not spin up when the power supply cord is attached. (I've tested the power supply jacks and they are supplying +5V and +12V as they should.)




One of the SATA drives is at a local computer repair shop where they're going to try and find a replacement PCB. For the two drives that I have at home

EIDE
+12V 2.6 Kilo-ohms
+5V 167 ohms

SATA
+12V 27 mega-ohms
+5V 0.440 kilo-ohms
+3.3V infinite resistance

The resistance at the +12V input seems quite high. Is there a zero-ohm link near the +12V pin on the SATA drive? If so, and if it is open, check the resistance of any nearby TVS diode. If the diode is shorted, then remove it and bypass the link with a picofuse, say 2 amps. The TVS diodes provide sacrificial protection from sustained overvoltages. Otherwise they are intended to clamp short duration spikes.

See this article for an explanation:
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_from_inside.html

Thanks for the advice.



I'll check this as soon as I have the Torx drivers for removing the PCB. If I do find a zero-ohm resistor what would it indicate about my drive?



This would be a nice solution to the problem. Why not replace the TVS diode with another TVS diode instead of a picofuse?

Sorry, my wording was not clear. Replace the zero-ohm resistor with a picofuse, if it is open. The drive will run quite happily without the protection diode, if you can trust your power supply. For continued protection, the diode can be replaced with something in the SMBJ (600W) or SMAJ (400W) series.

Thank you fzabkar. I'll post again when I've had a chance to look into the things that you've suggested.