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I messed up badly while moving things around in my case. When i went to re-connect my drives, i accidentally connected the power cable in the wrong way to my drive. Turned on the computer, heard some crackling, smelled the smoke and then realized what i had done. The pcb is dead i figure. I found an old maxtor diamondmax plus 60 drive lying around. i took the pcb off of it and put it on my plus 9. It powered up, but of course can not be read in the bios. When powered up, i instantly heard a lot of ticking noises. I quickly shut it down and removed the board. I found a new matching pcb on ebay, it is identical. what are the chances though that putting on the wrong pcb board further damaged the HD so that even the new pcb will not work? I really hope i did not cause further damage to the drive. any ideas??

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I attached a photo of my actual pcb. I have read a lot that maybe the TVS diodes are bad. Can someone tell me from my picture where these diodes are so I can try and remove them? I have nothing to loose with this board anyway as it is fried. can someone maybe circle the diodes and repost for me to see? I have no idea where they are. I have read near the power connector, that is about all I know. thanks!

Attached Images

PCB.jpg (111.0 KB, 5 views)

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I just noticed the smooth chip has what looks like a wrinkle on top of it. It does not look normal at all. You can see it in the picture as well. Possible this chip burnt out? If so, I can easily find an exact match for this pcb board, do I want to try that next???

Tumbleweed36

I am not an expert in this particular hard drive area, but we do have someone who is on the Hardware TEam. I will ask Raptor_Pa to take a look at your issue, because he knows enough about drives to advise you which direction you should go. When he comes back on, hopefully he will stop and look at your question.

Addendum: I have notified him and asked him to take a look at your questions.

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a follow up, you cannot see it in the picture, but on the smooth chip, one of the pins right below the apparent damage to the chip, is completely missing. By looking at all the other pins, this does not look right at all. Could be the pin got blown out I guess. I am thinking now with more certainty that the smooth chip is toast. If so, could any further damage have occurred? I know when I put in a different pcb board for a few seconds (stupidly i now know) the drive powered up and the disc was spinning, but a lot of clicking (probably cause of the wrong pcb). Thanks for any help.

raptor_pa

That damage to the smooth chip is pretty common on overvoltage. the TVS diodes don't seem to be as effective on Maxtor's as others. The Smooth chip is the motor controller chip.
Now as far as other issues, it is possible the preamp ( a tiny chip that is internal on the head stack could have also been damaged by the power inversion. Also, even tho Maxtor drives are some of the more tolerant of board swaps, the boards must be from the same family, and depending on the family may have to match some other criteria. I'll include my notes on matching Maxtors in this post. The possible problem is using a board from a different family. The pin out on the boards contacts may have been different. The headstack feeds through spring loaded contacts to teh PCB on drives, the pinouts, the signal/voltage on each pin may be different between models even in the same family, it's also possible the location of the solder pads the pins contact, the spacing and any number of other things could be wrong. If you heard clicking, at least the Voice coil motor is working and the heads are moving. You could have damaged the preamp, or even the heads themselves with the incorrect board. About the only way to be sure, is get a board that matches the criteria.

Here is the information to match for Maxtor Drives, again these are pretty easy, and USUALLY ( I'm pretty sure none of the DMax 9 family need it) don't need a rom chip swap.

For the following Maxtor hard drive models: Fireball 3, DiamondMax 16,
DiamondMax Plus 8, DiamondMax Plus 9, Diamond Max 10 and all MaxLine
products there is also a GTLA Number on the model (next to barcode on the
bottom of the drive). Format 1Y222J2223322. 1, 2 and 3 stand for numbers, Y
and J for letters. The numbers 1 and 3 as well as the letter Y need to be
identical to be able to replace the PCB on these drives.

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if the preamp were damaged, would the drive still spin? are there any kinds of signs of damage to the preamp that i can look for? I read that if the preamp is shorted, the drive would not spin at all. i was also reading that if the preamp is damaged, any board connected would fry as well, is this true? i am praying the preamp is ok and it is only the smooth chip. i will try a pcb board and go from there i guess. thanks for your help.

raptor_pa

I've read some postings in forums about some checks for preamps on specific models, nothing on the maxtors and nothing I have found that I would consider definitive. I've also read the preamp can kill a good board, but I haven't encountered it yet. The preamp is a very small chip that is actually attached to the head stack, on some drives it is actually glued in place and just a 'friction' connection to the circuit board. I have done some head swaps on drives that were probably dead preamps based on results I was seeing on some of our test gear. Not definitive but it's a case of if you see x.y.andZ it's probably the preamp. After a head swap using teh original board the drive operated fine for recovery purposes, so I'm not so sure the bad pream can kill a board thought is valid, or at least valid in all cases. It may be a valid point depending on how the preamp failed. You should probably not be looking for board oly. the price difference between teh boare board and a complete drive with compatible board is not that mauch, and with a complete drive you can fire up the replacement drive to verify the board is indeed functional. Just be sure to use good static procedures, ground yourelf before handling the board. Logically I can see how in some cases the preamp being shorted could prevent the drive from spinning. On certain models this may be true but the preamp is handled on the 5VDC side, the spindle motor on 3.5 inch drives is on the 12VDC side. Switching for the 12VDC is probably handled by 5VDC components so if somehow the preamp dropped the 5VDC line it might keep it from spinning. Again, something I've never encountered in the lab. But hey, there are lots of guys in the recovery business who know the drives better than I do, and have worked on a whole lot more tha I have so I never speak terms of 100% certainty. I definitely think you have a reasonably good chance on this one with the correct board.

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ok, thanks! I will post my results next week when I get the new board. I just want to recover my data and replace the drive. I back up, i just have not in about 6 months, so now i am paying the price.

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raptor_pa, if in fact a preamp on a HD is bad, what commonly would happen when the drive is powered up? Would it make clicking noises? would it act normal but not post? would it not power on at all? just trying to be prepared for this in the event a new board does not solve the problem. thanks again.

raptor_pa

The physical symptom would be clicking, but that is not indicative of only a bad preamp, it could be heads, platter surface preamp or in this case more likely cause is a mismatch in the firmware between teh drive and the PCB. Drives have their own ' boot' sequence at start up. There are some parameters nomally referred to as adaptives that are specific to each individual drive. The initial code to start the boot sequence is located on the PCB in a Rom chip, nvram chip or other strage where exactly depends on the make and model of the drive. Some newer drives also include at least some of the adaptive parameters on a chip on the PCB. Maxtors generally don't ( Dmax 22 probably does, sincwe it is built off the seagate 7200.11 drive technology ) Yours doesn't. Locating and interpreting the firmware and adaptive modules on the platter is what the rom on your drive would do. So if location and format of those modules is different between the two families, the information could not be found and read correctly, the drive would not init, but the heads would continue to try and seek the Service Area tracks. The clicking you hear is the head stack returning to it's starting area in the middle of the platter, then sweeping to the outer edge looking for this information. The click iteslf is the head stack hitting the limit bumpers that prevent the heads from moving too far to the center, or too far out and eventually off the platter surface. The preamp failure would click for basically the same reason. The drive was unable to read the SA tracks. The reason it couldn't read tho would be different, in one case, it is looking in the wrong place, in the case of a failed preamp, the signal is not getting back to the PCB. The clicking is kind of like flu symptoms. The symptoms tell you you are sick, it takes some more in depth specialized testing to be sure what is making you sick.

I think if you match the drive family, the GTLA number, and capacity you should be good to go. Of course the closer you can get on other items to match ( the Code X,X,X,X actual model number, date of manufacture) the better chance you get for a compatible match. If you google for used hard drive or hard driv parts you will find some vendors who are used to dealing with data recovery companies, and who will know where to look for the parmeters you are looking for. They may not tell you what to match, but they will find what you want to match. You can also try here, I've never used them but wouldn't hurt to check with them. http://www.hdd-parts.com/index.html the front page has a link to matching your maxtor board.

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I bought my board from them at http://www.hdd-parts.com/index.html. They are in WA and me in FL, couldn't be any further away really and stay in the US! I spoke to them on the phone as well. They have a match for me, they said however my chip number 040110200 is a maxtor chip that has several firmwares. I gave them my codes, and they said they will do their best to match it for me. They also said with this chip and doing it this way their success rate is about 70%. They also said that if this does not work, I can send the 2 boards back and they will transfer the f/w for me for a small fee. At least I can get a F/W match eventually if it does not work upon receipt.

You answered my next question above in that if i do match an incorrect pcb could that in fact make the drive click. I am feeling a little better at least that you said it could. I have had this drive for 5 years now, dated feb 2003. It has never failed me before and I have never heard a click out of it until the pcb mismatch. I got my fingers crossed that the new pcb will do it! Thanks for answering my questions!

raptor_pa

AT 5 years, it is probably about time to consider retiring that drive for a new one. Manufacturer's used to have a 5 year warranty on their drives, that is down to about a max of three now, and a lot are down to 1 year. This is generally a good sign that the reliability is going down too. The opposite side of that coin is that drives are a LOT cheaper - I probably still have a computer mag here from like 1996 where the cover story was the amingly fast drop in storage prices... a 1GB ( one gigabyte) drive was finally under $1000 US. :) I would tend to get the data back off this drive and start shopping for a replacement.

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Yes, i already got a replacement...just need to salvage the data if i can, and out it goes. should have the new board by tuesday, i will be back then! thanks again!

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raptor_pa, I got my new pcb today. It did not work. I do not understand why. It's very strange because I took my old 40gb maxtor pcb one more time and put it on my diamondmax plus 9 160gb drive (the dead one) and the drive powered on as before. I shut it off just when it started to click. With the board I receive in the mail today, it would not even power up! Other than the new board being DOA, why would it not at the very least power up??? I called hdd-parts and asked them the same. They said it is possible that it did not power on because the firmware is different. But so is the firmware from my 40gb drive! At least I know the drive does power, why it would not with the right card is beyond me. Do you have any ideas? Also, when i first connected the new pcb, it seemed to smell like smoke a little bit. I did not see smoke, hear crackling or see sparks at all. I quickly shut down as soon as i thought i noticed the smell. I am 100% certain the power was connected properly. Could my bad drive be killing good pcb's?? If so, it sure did not kill my 40gb pcb. Any ideas?? Let me know what you think, thanks!

raptor_pa

OK can you post a clear closeup of the label, so I can read all the data on that, or post a transcript of all the label numbers if that is possible? Also, on the boards, will be eithe silkscreened or as a trace the board model. I would expect they are both CalypsoIII boards, but let's confirm that.

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Here is a pic of the label. I sent the 2 boards back to hdd-parts already, so i cannot get any info of of them. if something in the drive would be killing the board, what could do that? i would think if it would kill 1 board, it would kill any board as well. the 40gb maxtor board powers the 160gb right up. i don't see what firmware would have to do with just powering on. a mismatch in that should not matter i would think when just connecting power to a device. i can see it making a difference when trying to access it, but just to make the drive spin does not make sense, does it?

Attached Images

Drive.JPG (37.3 KB, 3 views)

raptor_pa

The firmware ont eh board has to load before the drive will spin up part of the job of the smooth chip. Power to the motor is controlled by the motor control chip, if it can't init properly, then it will not initiate spin up. If the 40 GB drive is from the sam family (YAR in the code) then it should fire up the disk. It does however sound like another issue. all of the YAR drives I've seen use the CalypsoIII board, with pretty generic firmware, no adaptives on the board. I have pulled a 40GB board and used it on a 200GB drive. Assuming the disk does have an issue and is killing boards ( shorted preamp is about the only thing I can think of ) the reason it may not have killed the 40 is that the contact pins where the headstack contacts the PCB are either in a slightly different location, or the pinouts are different. It's not unusual to open two drives of the same model and see slightly different headstacks inside physically they may look the same, but electrically they can be quite different. I wish there was a hard and fast rule across manufacturers, or even across model umbers for matching components. But unfortunately there isn't. It seems like every drive we get in is a learning curve, you apply the basics that are known about a manufcaturer's drives, and then try to adjust that knowledge base to fit in the new information. Now I can't confirm this info, but this is supposedly a way to test the preamp this is a view of the pinouts on the connector that passes thru the HD case and contacts the PCB.

This is the third and 4th pin from the right
U can check the preamp with a multimeter, put it into diode checking mode.
Attach the red (positive) terminal to the GND pin and the black (negative) one to the -5V pin.
If the multimeter shows any value other than infinity, the preamp is gone. If it shows bellow ~1.000 the new board will be damaged probably if U try it.
Again I can not confirm the validity of this test, but assuming the pins are correct, the testing procedures and results make sense.

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thanks for the response! my 40gb drive is a dmax plus 60. no way it is it from the same family. the pins are identical on the outside, but like you said who knows on the inside. i will get a multimeter today and test those pins. if my preamp is gone, do i have to send it in to a data recovery place? or can they fix a preamp and have the drive working again? and if a preamp is bad, a drive will still spin up? i thought if that were the case, the drive would act dead as mine does with the new pcb i got.

raptor_pa

It depends on the drive, the preamp is not connected to motor power, but is checked during init. The logic flow on the PCB is not linear and direct to the motor. Failed init before motor start = no spin. The solution to dead preamp is head swap, at that point the drive may function fine, it may function at reduced efficiency. A head swaps only purpose is to get hte drive running long enough to get the data off, but it is too unstable at that point to continue to reuse. The value of the data is what comes into play. Generally a head swap is going to run between $1000 and $2000 US - depending on the model.