[sdiy] SCSI hard drive?

[R. D. Davis]

Quothe mark verbos, from writings of Thu, Mar 10, 2005 at 06:18:03PM -0500:
> Ok this is a longshot....
> I moved a SCSI harddrive inside my computer with the power on and I must 
> have touched some metal with the PCB side. Smoke came off the board and 
[...]
> Any guesses? Are these kind of parts available? The drive is a Seagate 
> Barracuda, BTW

In the event that replacing that fried chip doesn't fix the drive,
here are a couple of alternative ideas.  It's quite possible that
other components in that drive were zapped as well,

While "board swapping" goes against my idea of properly repairing
something, in these days of SMT devices, no schematics and components
bordering on unobtanium, sometimes it's the most practical solution,
alas.  Of course, perhaps some people feel the same way about
replacing an entire IC. :-) Having said that, perhaps swapping the
circuit board with one from a known good hard drive will work.

     * * * * DISCLAIMER: DO THE FOLLOWING AT YOUR OWN RISK * * * *

In situations where there are fried components inside of the sealed
part of the drive, where the platters reside, utilizing a home-made
"almost clean room" (e.g., a plexiglass box that's as dust, etc. free
as possible with your hands going into the box through long rubber
gloves attached/sealed to the box; perhaps also some HEPA filtration
if you want to take things that far), you may be able to make
additional repairs there and use the drive long enough to salvage data
from it.

Note: I've only worked on older opened drives, to free up stuck
mechanisms, and without using any sort of clean room, in a slightly
dusty environment with still air; those were older, full-height,
5-1/4" drives, back in the days of the ST-506 interface, and it
worked.  I've heard of others doing the same with newer and smaller
drives. YMMV.

       * * * *         * * * *         * * * *        * * * *         

Best of luck!

Robert

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