Re: Hard drive repair (longish)

From: PlainBill (PlainBill47_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 03/25/05 

Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 09:34:57 -0700

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 04:23:53 GMT, "James Sweet"
<jamessweet@hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>"PlainBill" <PlainBill47@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:9ij641di1vkunlhc0lohb7f6j9ebnqi6kc@4ax.com...
>> Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
>> gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
>> violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
>> backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
>> even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
>> but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.
>>
>> I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
>> tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
>> verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
>> The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
>> hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
>> properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
>> new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
>> then generates POST errors.
>>
>> At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
>> and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
>> replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
>> considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
>> should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
>> chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.
>>
>> Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
>> give?
>>
>> PlainBill
>
>Well the first bit of advice is to *not* buy Maxtor drives as they've been
>some of the least reliable I've dealt with, obviously that's no help now
>though.
>
>You could try replacing the motor driver IC, it's usually a square 44 pin or
>so SMT chip, replacing it requires some care and skill but it's doable.
>
James,

  I tend to agree with you on Maxtor drives, but I have several around
that have been working perfectly for more than 3 years. As far as
replacing the motor IC... Well, there's a problem. I'm competent
when working on a standard DIP package with pins on .1" centers. I
think I could handle the flash chip with 8 pins on .05" centers. I'm
sure I'd be out of my depth on a chip with 64 pins on .03" centers.

PlainBill

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