My drive was working one day. Then a couple days later I plugged my new HP laptop power adapter into my Maxtor OneToch 4 Plus. All I got was a flashing white light on the front. So after some painful dismantling of the case I was able to connect it to a SATA to USB adapter. Hoping that the connector on the external case was the problem.
So when I plugged it into the USB smoke came from the PCB board.

So I'm wondering if plugging in the laptop power adapter fried it? It can't be the SATA to USB because i tried it on another SATA drive and no smoke.

Get another identical drive, plug in the same (wrong) adapter: if you see the same white flash and after dismantling and connecting to the same sata-usb adapter you get same smoke, you were right.
What else do you expect?

Smoke = Fried.

Likely there is at least TVS damage, it could be worse; laptop connectors are 20v which is much higher then the drives PCB is spec for.

TVS may have failed at there job.



I can help i am in orange county.


PM me if you would like.

Would replacing the PCB board fix it?

You can give it a shot, you will likely need to transfer the ROM chip.


That should do it, but you need to take extra care when transferring the ROM


Also, if the preamp (I IC on the headstack) sustained damaged you will need a pro, procedure requires a cleanroom and alot of experience to fix.


Let me know if you have any questions.