Replacing electronical part of HDD

[jozefus]

I am going to replace electronical part of my electronically death HDD... Do you thing it will works? It is 30GB Maxtor drive... Drive has gone away in one time with motherboard, processor, power supply and it looks like because of some unstabillity of electric voltage in electrical network... And I had no surge suppressor socket in that time...

 

[mkaibear]

Do I think it will work?

I have no idea. It depends what's fried. It might work - it might not.

If it's just the board you've got a good chance of repairing it!

 

[yakyb]

possibly if you could find a copy of that hard drive because im guessing that all hdds use slightly different controllers you also want o be careful tht no dust gets on your platters as that will surely F up your drive

i dont think it would be hard to find a copy drive but to be honest i think (depending on importance of the data ) you would be best getting this done professionally

 

[Jofuss]

As long as only the hdd controller board is the only problem (which is most likely since there is VERY little electronics inside the hdd, most commonly a relay chip and a motor, if you are able to find an identical hdd you should be able to revive the dead hard drive. There are possible complications though...

The controller board might be a different revision, most times this is not a problem, some times it is... IE clicking arm of death

There could have been damage to your data, including sector 0 if your computer was on/booting at the time of the incident. This could leave you with needing to run an array of various pieces of software to fix the partition information/boot record and such before you can recover data.

Keep in mind that since 99.9 percent of the electronics are on the controller card, there is ABSOLUTELY no reason to break the seal of the platter casing. If replacing the controller card does not fix it, there is no feasible consumer grade fix for the hdd.

 

[Guest]

possibly if you could find a copy of that hard drive because im guessing that all hdds use slightly different controllers you also want o be careful tht no dust gets on your platters as that will surely F up your drive

Errmmm....you are not suggesting he is actually trying to OPEN the HD? Think man think. Wahts inside a HD? Vacuum right. And how do we get that back in one wer're done srewing our platers not with dust because we are working in a dust free space? NOT AT ALL.

He is just trying to replace the electronics. And that will work unless something else inside is broken...

 

[Zorg]

possibly if you could find a copy of that hard drive because im guessing that all hdds use slightly different controllers you also want o be careful tht no dust gets on your platters as that will surely F up your drive

Errmmm....you are not suggesting he is actually trying to OPEN the HD? Think man think. Wahts inside a HD? Vacuum right. And how do we get that back in one wer're done srewing our platers not with dust because we are working in a dust free space? NOT AT ALL.

He is just trying to replace the electronics. And that will work unless something else inside is broken...

I think that he was just insuring that the OP had the same level of understanding as you. If someone asked me about changing the "electronical" parts of something, I would make the assumption that he/she had no understanding about whatever they were asking about. It is better to be on the safe side.

Edit: I thought you were responding to this quote "Keep in mind that since 99.9 percent of the electronics are on the controller card, there is ABSOLUTELY no reason to break the seal of the platter casing. If replacing the controller card does not fix it, there is no feasible consumer grade fix for the hdd." After looking at that again, maybe he thought you need to open the HD. "No dust gets on your platters" OOPS My bad

 

[Guest]

No problem...

But I was shocked at the suggestion to watch out for the dust^^

I once tried to get one single fluff of dust off my SLR's sensor... Needless to say it had to be professionally cleaned afterwards...

 

[Jofuss]

But I was shocked at the suggestion to watch out for the dust^^

Aye, that made my brain hurt...

 

[Rhinofart]

As long as you are replacing the controller board with an identical match controller board then you will have no problems. I have done this several times for both customers and for myself. And there is no need to break the seal on the drive to access the platters. If your motor has gone, and that data on the drive is extremely important then you should send away to a professional data recovery team. I have taken several drives apart in my day, and I can honestly say that doing a platter swap into a different drive would be a lot harder then you think. You can eliminate the dust problem by doing it in your bathroom. Run your shower for a little bit just to get some steam in the room. That will take the dust out of the air and bring it to the ground. You could then crack the seal on your drive and do what you need to it. I did that a few years ago to a 30 Gig maxtor that I did a window mod on. Drive lasted for about 2 years after that so I know it works. I still wouldn't be comfortable doing a platter swap though. One little fingerprint, and your data is borked!!!

 

[blunc]

I REALLY doubt there is a vacuum in hard drives, if there were how would the drive create enough of a vortex to release the head locking mechanism?

How would you get a Dust Buster into your drive anyway?

The main issue with whether changing the drive electronics (if that is all that has failed), will be how the platter defects stored in sram on the board electronics will line up with the new drive it's being mounted to.

 

[Guest]

You can eliminate the dust problem by doing it in your bathroom. Run your shower for a little bit just to get some steam in the room. That will take the dust out of the air and bring it to the ground. You could then crack the seal on your drive and do what you need to it.

Yes go ahead and do that. I'm not gonna be there when you need someone to cry to...

 

[rodney_ws]

I'm agreeing with a previous poster... if you can't live without the data, this is something that should be handled professionally. I just sent off a drive that likely had a similar problem (well, it didn't SOUND like a mechanical problem) and $900 later my employer has its data back. An expensive lesson for sure, but not for one minute did anyone here suggest I crack open the disk and try something on my own.

If you're just wanting to see if you can do it, go for it... sounds like a fun project. If it comes to mounting platters in another drive, I think that'd be physically impossible for someone to do without the proper (expensive) equipment.

 

[Rhinofart]

What are you talking about?

 

[prplvelvet]

Disc drives are not vaccuum sealed.
How would the heads fly with no air?

Think man Think!

 

[Rhinofart]

Hard drives are NOT vacuum sealed. They have breather holes with filters on them.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

I REALLY doubt there is a vacuum in hard drives, if there were how would the drive create enough of a vortex to release the head locking mechanism?

The main issue with whether changing the drive electronics (if that is all that has failed), will be how the platter defects stored in sram on the board electronics will line up with the new drive it's being mounted to.

Hard drives are not vacuum sealed - there is air inside, and a filter hole in the hard drive casing for pressure equalization.

Most modern hard drives no longer store drive-specific data (mapped-out bad blocks, head/amplifier gain parameters, etc.) on the logic board. It is all stored on a track/cylinder on the platters that isn't accessible via the IDE/SATA interface. This is done specifically so that the logic boards are interchangeable between drives, as long as the board revision/model is the same.

All modern Maxtors that I've seen use identical logic boards. I have performed this swap between a DiamondMax 9 and a MaxLine II+ sucessfully.

 

[mkaibear]

There's no vacuum inside a HDD.

All HDDs have breather holes to equalise the pressure between inside and outside.