[OT] Troubleshooting ATA Drives..

[Dan Wright]

Thanks, Sellam.

I was thinking this myself, but hadn't yet found the time to say it :)

Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> People,
> 
> I clearly read below where David requested that you "drop me a note
> off-list".
> 
> It is these very off-topic threads that break out that are causing Jay and
> the moderators grief.
> 
> Please police yourselves better.
> 
> On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, der Mouse wrote:
> 
> 
>>>Any one with experience on doing electrical troubleshooting on
>>>(Maxtor) ATA Drives, please drop me a note off-list.  I just had a PS
>>>failure and it "took-out" a drive with some fairly critical data.  I
>>>believe the board (rather than the platter itself) took the bullet,
>>>and I want to explore options before sending the drive out for $6K+
>>>in repair costs.
>>
>>Well, one option might be to try to find an identical drive and swap
>>boards between then.  In my (admittedly rather limited) experience,
>>swapping logic boards is just a matter of taking a few screws out and
>>making sure the boards get lined up correctly.  But you need an
>>identical drive to swap with.  If the drive is still available, getting
>>another identical one is likely to run way less than $6K and may well
>>be worth doing against the chance it'll work.
>>
>>You will almost certainly need a torx of the right size, which
>>probably means a decent set of torxes; every drive I've looked at with
>>an eye to mechanical disassembly has been held together with torxes.
>>
>>For that matter, I'm in a similar situation: I have a Maxtor which
>>reports itself as having 0 heads, 0 sectors/track, and 0 cylinders; if
>>I had an identical drive, I'd try swapping boards, but I don't.
>>
>>/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
>>\ / Ribbon Campaign
>> X  Against HTML	       mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
>>/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
>>
> 
> 

-- 

Dan Wright
(dtwright at uiuc.edu)
(http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright)

"we are content if we can describe a multitude of other things in terms of...
fundamental incomprehensibilities. science is an activity that takes place on
the shore of an infinite sea of mystery."

chet raymo, "doctor seuss and doctor einstein"