Help on Hard Drive Circuit Board Short

[blackknight]

Here's the skinny, I appreciate any inputs:

A friend has a non-functional hard drive. I've done recovery of
crashed hard drives several times, so I say "no problem". I set the
jumpers, plug it in to my workhorse computer as the second drive,
power up, and - nothing. No spin up of anything, computer is dead.
After a brief checkout and head scratching, I unplug the drive and
put it in my other working computer. Same thing - completely dead.

The problem as you may have guessed, is that the bad hard drive is
flipping the circuit breaker in my power supplies. This is occurring
on connection of the power cables to the drive, before I even get a
chance to try the power button. My friend gave me Carte Blanche on
this drive, so I've done all of the following:

1. Tried it as the only drive on system - no dice
2. Did the "freezer" trick - no dice
3. Opened it up and examined the circuitry - no obvious damage.
4. Examined the hard disk surface and spin integrity- no problems.

It seems clear there is a short somewhere in the drive circuitry. But
is there anything I can do, or is this a total loss? Has anyone ever
encountered this? Is getting a replacement circuit board a viable
option, or am I grasping?

-Tim

Drive is a Seagate ST360020A - 60 GB

 

[RogBaker]

I would give it a few good wacks.
I doubt it, but did you test to see if just the extra power consumption
tripped the breaker, like you were almost borderline before you plugged
it in?

 

[Ed Medlin]

Here's the skinny, I appreciate any inputs:

A friend has a non-functional hard drive. I've done recovery of
crashed hard drives several times, so I say "no problem". I set the
jumpers, plug it in to my workhorse computer as the second drive,
power up, and - nothing. No spin up of anything, computer is dead.
After a brief checkout and head scratching, I unplug the drive and
put it in my other working computer. Same thing - completely dead.

The problem as you may have guessed, is that the bad hard drive is
flipping the circuit breaker in my power supplies. This is occurring
on connection of the power cables to the drive, before I even get a
chance to try the power button. My friend gave me Carte Blanche on
this drive, so I've done all of the following:

1. Tried it as the only drive on system - no dice
2. Did the "freezer" trick - no dice
3. Opened it up and examined the circuitry - no obvious damage.
4. Examined the hard disk surface and spin integrity- no problems.

It seems clear there is a short somewhere in the drive circuitry. But
is there anything I can do, or is this a total loss? Has anyone ever
encountered this? Is getting a replacement circuit board a viable
option, or am I grasping?

-Tim

Drive is a Seagate ST360020A - 60 GB

The only other option is a very expensive professional recovery. Since it
did the same on every machine, I doubt that any home/PC shop solution will
work. The Pro folks recover data exclusively in most cases and since that is
all they do, it is a very costly solution that is usually done for people
with extremely sensitive data on their drives.

Ed

 

[dawg]

Yes.You can definitely replace the circuit board. Just have to find one from
an identical drive.

 

[Norm De Plume]

Yes.You can definitely replace the circuit board.

Doesn't step 4 make that fruitless?

 

[BigJim]

if you have opened the drive you may have contaminated the disks
but you can try to get a drive exactly like it and use the circuit board