Recovering a hard drive that was killed by static electricity?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
H

Heroguy294

Honorable
May 7, 2013
14
0
10,510
I was working in my computer's case recently. I open the side panel, and I see my four hard drives.

I have a 3.5" 1.5 TB 5900 RPM as my boot hard drive, a 3.5" 2 TB 7200 RPM hard drive an inch below it, then a 2.5" 1 TB 5400 RPM hard drive and a half broken 3 TB hard drive that reads as around 750 GB.

I turn the case towards me, and I put my right hand on the metal part of the case to discharge any static electricity.

Now, I have read that a discharge of 10 volts can damage a hard drive, but humans don't feel it until at least 12,000 volts.

My thumb touched the 2 TB hard drive when I grabbed the case. I actually felt the static discharge into the hard drive. No, I wasn't grounded, which is why I tried to grab onto the case.

I do what I wanted to in the case, sealed it back up, and I booted up my computer, having forgotten about what happened. Then, about 7 PM that night, I look in windows explorer. My 2 TB hard drive is not there.

I ignore it for a few days, at which point I go back to check for loose cables, and then I check in the bios. It wasn't there.

At this point I remembered that I discharged static into my hard drive.

Anyway, point of this whole thread is, is there any way I can fix this thing without spending $200 for some company to fix it? I'd like to be able to do it myself. I don't trust some company not to look through my personal files.
 
Solution
M
Usually what's happened with a static discharge is that you've shorted out the little printed circuit board (PCB) on the bottom of the hard drive that interfaces the mechanical hard drive. The good news is that those can be replaced. A typical computer repair shop will probably charge you $100 to do so (I had that done once). Or, you could look for the interface PCB board yourself.

The problem with doing it yourself is that you have to get the EXACT same interface board that your hard drive has, with the EXACT same firmware revision. If it's not exactly the same then you risk wasting your money. You should be able to find them on E-bay or just Google it.
Sort by date Sort by votes
Onus

Onus

Titan
Jan 27, 2006
37,037
12
89,965
The circuit board is probably what was zapped. Rule out the port on your motherboard by trying it on another port first. Assuming it fails, you can look for an identical drive on places like eBay and swap the board from it, but it needs to be the same revision. A local shop may have some dead drives (but it could be their boards too) they might let you try.
Incidentally, a 5900RPM drive will be very slow as a boot drive. If you get your 2TB drive fixed, you might want to consider using it as your boot drive. Or get another drive (possibly a SSD) large enough to use to clone your boot drive.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

mbreslin1954

Distinguished
Nov 27, 2010
1,515
1
20,460
Usually what's happened with a static discharge is that you've shorted out the little printed circuit board (PCB) on the bottom of the hard drive that interfaces the mechanical hard drive. The good news is that those can be replaced. A typical computer repair shop will probably charge you $100 to do so (I had that done once). Or, you could look for the interface PCB board yourself.

The problem with doing it yourself is that you have to get the EXACT same interface board that your hard drive has, with the EXACT same firmware revision. If it's not exactly the same then you risk wasting your money. You should be able to find them on E-bay or just Google it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
mauller07

mauller07

Splendid
Mar 28, 2010
2,801
0
21,960
the 3TB drive probably is not broken, you most likely have a 32bit os which cannot read the correct volume, if you stick 64bit windows on, it will show its full volume.

i had dealings with a broken drive, i basically got an identical drive and luckily since they were from near enough the same batches i swapped the controller boards and was able to backup the data on the drive, swapped the boards back then i just RMA the broken drive since it died within a year. (they don't need to know it was static that killed it)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F

fzabkar

Judicious
Sep 22, 2010
9,302
702
36,390
A straight board swap on modern drives will most probably not work. That's because each board has unique drive specific information stored in a flash memory. These data need to be transferred to your donor PCB. Some vendors (onepcbsolution.com and hdd-parts.com) will do this for free. I don't believe hddzone provides such a service.

That said, what is the model number of your drive? Does it spin up? Sometimes there is an easy no-cost DIY fix.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
H

Heroguy294

Honorable
May 7, 2013
14
0
10,510
Okay... I do have the 7200 RPM drive, and it is good news that it is repairable...

But I currently am saving up money to get a new computer, and I can't afford to buy anything else at the moment... Maybe I'll repair it in the future, But I can live without it for the moment.

Plus i'd probably make it worse if I try to add a new PCB board.

Also, I have windows 7 64 bit. I don't believe I have a UEFI BIOS on this computer atm. But the 3 TB hard drive does read as 3 TB in linux, but not in windows. I'm gonna use Linux on the new computer, and I am going to transfer my hard drives over, so maybe I can fix it then.

I'm probably gonna add a 4 TB hard drive at some point in the future anyway.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F

fzabkar

Judicious
Sep 22, 2010
9,302
702
36,390
If it were my drive, I would try to find out why it failed. That's why I asked if it spins up. If it doesn't spin up, then the most likely fault is a PCB failure. Often such failures are the result of an overvoltage from a failing PSU. These result in shorted TVS diodes, in which case the fix is relatively easy. More importantly, if an overvoltage is indeed responsible, then your other drives would be at risk as well.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom