SATA Drives Smoked

[wvar15]

My old case had 3 Western Digital 80 Gig drives. The power supply failed. There was no smoke, just a high pitched noise from one of the capacitors. I installed a new power supply and the system would power up for about 1 second and shut off. I found that disconnecting the 4 pin ATX plug would allow the system stay powered on. I figured the motherboard must have been damaged, so I built a new system.

I had 2 new SATA 2 drives and a DVD burner working fine in the new system when I added one of the old drives. It smoked as soon as power was applied. I installed the second drive using a different power connector, and it smoked also. The third drive I hooked up to the SATA power cable the DVD burner was using and same story.

I checked the power connectors with a meter and they were wired correctly and had a stable +12 vdc and +5 vdc. I know the new case must be working or the DVD and new drives would have fried by now.

Any ideas what could have caused this? I would have figured if the power supply from the old case caused the problem the drives would have burned in that case when the failure happened.

I'm going the try and find this model drive for sale and swap circuit boards.

 

[fzabkar]

The usual culprit is a shorted TVS diode, in which case it can simply be removed. However, be certain that your power supply is good, as you will no longer have any overvoltage protection on the affected supply rail. A 12V diode can be replaced with an SMBJ12A, and a 5V diode with an SMAJ5.0A. Both can be purchased from Farnell, Mouser, Digikey.

If you need help identifying the components, upload detailed photos of the component sides of each board.

The following URLs may also help:

http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_from_inside.html
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/HDD_ICs.txt
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/TVS_diodes.txt

 

[wvar15]

Thanks! Hopefully I'll be able to recover the data off at least one of the 3.

 

[wvar15]

The usual culprit is a shorted TVS diode, in which case it can simply be removed. However, be certain that your power supply is good, as you will no longer have any overvoltage protection on the affected supply rail. A 12V diode can be replaced with an SMBJ12A, and a 5V diode with an SMAJ5.0A. Both can be purchased from Farnell, Mouser, Digikey.

If you need help identifying the components, upload detailed photos of the component sides of each board.

The following URLs may also help:

http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_from_inside.html
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/HDD_ICs.txt
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/TVS_diodes.txt

It looks like the VCM chip fried on each one. Is it worth trying a new PCB?

Here's what they look like. This one was the worse.

 

[fzabkar]

Unfortunately your drives are earlier models which weren't fitted with TVS diodes. :-(

However, the good news is that the serial EEPROM is external to the Marvell MCU. This means that you will be able to transfer the 8-pin chip at location U12 (below the Samsung SDRAM) from patient to donor. This chip contains unique, drive specific calibration data.

Alternatively, the following vendor can supply the board and a firmware transfer service for about US$60 - $70:
http://www.hdd-parts.com/firmware-transfer.html

 

[wvar15]

Unfortunately your drives are earlier models which weren't fitted with TVS diodes. :-(

However, the good news is that the serial EEPROM is external to the Marvell MCU. This means that you will be able to transfer the 8-pin chip at location U12 (below the Samsung SDRAM) from patient to donor. This chip contains unique, drive specific calibration data.

Alternatively, the following vendor can supply the board and a firmware transfer service for about US$60 - $70:
http://www.hdd-parts.com/firmware-transfer.html

Thanks! I'll probably just pay for the firmware transfer. I don't have access the a SMT solder station anymore. I'm not sure how much heat the EEPROM can take if I removed it using solder wick.

 

[wvar15]

Best answer selected by wvar15.