I'm trying to find out if my hard-drive is salvageable.

I'll make a long story extremely short:

I thought I was plugging in the side wall mounted cooling fan but I accidentally plugged in a hard-drive. The drive was mounted in the box but was not being used, i.e. not plugged in. The main power was ON at the time. I know this was stupid but I wasn't planning on plugging in the hard-drive, just the cooling fan.

I think I fried the circuit board on the drive. Nothing "appears" physically damaged but obviously something is wrong because the BIOS doesn't even see the drive. Has anyone done this before? Do you think the manufacturer could simply replace the board on the drive? It's practically brand new, Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, manufacture date: 09Sept2003.

My next email is to Maxtor. Thanks if you have any advice.

Chris

hmm, is it jumpered correctly? if not, there are services out there for data recovery, but that depends on how much your data is worth, if it's not worth to much to you you might be SOL..

Did you plug the IDE cable in as well?

I have tried a few things with no success:

1) Powering up with the drive as the primary IDE master (which doesn't make much sense because it doesn't have a boot partition, it was formatted to provided extended partitions to my existing Linux system). But I tried anyway.
2) Same as 1) except that I booted from a Live Knoppix CD (which I'm running now) with the hard-drive attached as the primary IDE master. Unfortunately the drive isn't visible. Of course, if the BIOS can't see it, then no OS will.
3) Powering up with the drive as the primary IDE slave.

The IDE cable and jumpers are set properly. I've even had a friend look at it in case I've somehow gone mad.

I've tried the drive in 3 computers now and no BIOS seems to see it. I think I'm gonna have to shell out $1000 to have a data recovery center fix it.

Has anyone attempted to replace the circuit board on their drive? I'm not a complete EE novice. I've etched a few boards and made some homemade microcontroller projects. But I don't know the extent of damage that can occur from plugging in a drive with the power on. Anyone?

Chris

$1000? your data must be quite valuable....

Replacing a circuit board is quit easy and self explanitory. I have done it myself several times.

i've seen articles where guys have replaced the circuit board on a hd and been successful.
the key seems to be to get the exact circuit board replacement-don't go by the hd mod#, the circuit board is the thing. since your drive is relatively new, there is probably one available.
good luck.

The data is personally valuable to me. Along with photos I had many weeks of work invested in several Linux apps (including an iTunes clone and automatic web page generation scripts, among others).

I'm off to the computer store to see if they have circuit board (PCB) replacements or the exact harddrive I bought so that I can switch out the board. I'll be sure to verify the circuit board model #.

Hopefully I'll be reporting back with my success in this endeavor.

Thanks.

please do tell us, if not successfull at the store, then try contacting the manufacturer

SUCCESS!!!

I bought the same model hard-drive and simply switched the PC boards and the drive works again!! Not ALL the numbers on the boards matched exactly but the new drive was manufactured a month after the old one so I was praying for reverse compatibility if there were any differences at all.

I'VE BACKED UP EVERYTHING AND HAVE DEFINITELY LEARNED MY LESSON.

I have one concern. A friend mentioned that there may be some information stored on the old PC board that is needed. For example, maybe bad sectors are marked in a flash chip on the PC board. Anyone out there know anything about the inner workings of hard-drives? Is there anything on the PC board that may cause me head-aches?

Now... what to do with the "new" drive with the bad PC board...

glad to see that worked out.

Quote:

Originally posted by chris8myshoe SUCCESS!!! I have one concern. A friend mentioned that there may be some information stored on the old PC board that is needed. For example, maybe bad sectors are marked in a flash chip on the PC board. Anyone out there know anything about the inner workings of hard-drives? Is there anything on the PC board that may cause me head-aches?

Not that I'm any expert, but I really wouldn't break a sweat about that remote possibility.

store it and keep it inase something happens to the drive it self

Now that you've gotten the original hurdle out of the way, you can sit back and scan ebay/electronics supply stores for just the circuit board for a while.

You might find just the circuit board eventually.
Heck, email maxtor anyway. See if you can order one.

--Shade

It looks like I'm going to have to try the former option. Here is my email to Maxtor and their reply:

Message:
> Is it possible to get a replacement for the PC board on my DiamondMax Plus
> internal 80GB ATA / 133 hard-drive? By "PC board" I mean that little
> circuit board on the bottom of the drive.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help,
> Chris
>

Dear Customer
Maxtor does not sell just parts. You would have to purchase that circuit
board elswhere [sic] or purchase a new hard drive.

Thank You
Maxtor Customer Service

----------------

Thanks for the tip. I'll keep an eye on eBay.

p.s. Almost worse than the talking paper clip is that damn "search" dog!