printed circuit board

steloide

Hi.
Does anybody have much experience with printed circuit board on hdd. I bought a 1TB hdd on Adverts when i got around to using it i was meet with "windows can not be installed on this drive......disk will soon fail....." anyways a couple of days later i went about running hirens HDAT2, but when i put in the drive, it ran for a second then shut down the pc. It shows no sign of life so i am presuming there is a problem with the printed circuit board?? I have checked out prices of these boards and its cheaper to buy a new drive, for the fear that its not the PCB (printed circuit board) then im down nearly €100. Any help will be very much appreciated. I dont mind doing a bit of soldering if that what it takes to fix it.

degsie

steloide wrote: »

Hi.
Does anybody have much experience with printed circuit board on hdd. I bought a 1TB hdd on Adverts when i got around to using it i was meet with "windows can not be installed on this drive......disk will soon fail....." anyways a couple of days later i went about running hirens HDAT2, but when i put in the drive, it ran for a second then shut down the pc. It shows no sign of life so i am presuming there is a problem with the printed circuit board?? I have checked out prices of these boards and its cheaper to buy a new drive, for the fear that its not the PCB (printed circuit board) then im down nearly €100. Any help will be very much appreciated. I dont mind doing a bit of soldering if that what it takes to fix it.

It's always a risk buying used hdd's. The problem could also be a mechanical failure within the drive. Unless you are prepared to purchase an identical working drive and swapping the pcbs you can never be sure. My advise is to invest in a new hdd, that way you will be covered by a warranty for some period of time.

steloide

Good advice, Thanks

ozmo

try rtm the drive anyway - go to the manufacturer sites and enter the serial numbers - never know you may be able exchange it. Its most likely a mechanical fail. Also a new 1TB drive is only about 60 euros new.

They are generally unrepairable by anyone without a clean room facility - not sure the swap electronics board works 100% anymore either with newer drives as there is configuration specific to the mechanical part of the drive stored on it that you would loose.

ppkpatrick

I've looked into swapping a hdd PCB myself after i shorted out my 12 volt rail and ground on my power supply stupidly killing my hdd and motherboard.
Basically, as ozmo said,the hdd is factory calibrated.Calibration is unique to the hard drive and is stored on ROM on the PCB.In order to do a PCB swap the donor PCB would have to be pretty much identical and you would have to de-solder the ROM chip from the dead hdd and solder it to the donor.
It's a lot of work but with the right tools it can be done and is useful if the data on your dead drive is very important.

steloide

Thanks for all your advise. Its looking like a new drive and like you said ozmo there are about €60. I bought the one in question for €50......so much for saving a tenner.