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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
Hard drive Failure
Aaargh. Yes, this is not C64 specific. well indirectly it may be...
I have had 500gb worth of personal data on my maxtor usb harddrive (including unreleased c64 conversion tools etc). I had accidently plugged in a higher voltage power connector and now the harddrive will not work at all.
A green flickering light is just displayed.
From research this unit just consists of a standard IDE harddrive connected to usb circuitry which means in theory that i should be able to connect it to my desktop and get the data back.
Now the main cause of worry... what if the drive is fried as well??
I dont want to spend too much of a fortune. Has anyone experienced something like this and what can be done about it. eg contact info etc.
I have heard ontrack is quite reliable, but costs an absolute fortune.
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
Ok so its repairs or board replacement?
I wonder what the chances would be of my very important data being scrambled? |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11360 |
if that data is actually *really* very important to you - stop doing trickery yourself NOW. prepare for spending lots of money to someone like ontrack.
if thats no option, lean back. breath. learn how to make backups. your data is lost.
(replacing the drives board actually can work.... but it's harder than it seems - you not only need one from the exact same drive modell, but also one with the exact same firmware. this will be almost impossible to find unless you are collecting huge amounts of hds for exactly that reason, like any serious data recovery company does) |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
Does it matter if the board has the same firmware? if they are different what would be the problem?
Perhaps i can just hand it over to a repair shop such as PC world emphasising that i want the data to remain intact?
Ontrack are way too expensive. wonder how much they would charge for 300gb of data.. £20,000? |
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MagerValp
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1074 |
Whatever you do, don't turn over the drive to minimum wage monkeys at PC World.
The make of the USB cabinet (Maxtor) is of no consequence, you want to pick up a naked barracuda drive. If it's a fairly recent 320 GB drive it shouldn't be too hard.
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
Groapaz mentioned that the bios of the motherboard needs to be identical or would this matter? |
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MagerValp
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1074 |
No, he was talking about the HD controller board firmware. It's just a plain IDE drive. |
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Six
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 293 |
Is it a regular old IDE drive? If you plug it in with the ribbon cable backwards, it will do exactly what you described no matter what the jumper settings are. (red stripe goes towards the power adapter) Same thing for the board end of the connector. Also, if you have two drives on the cable, they both have to be jumpered properly. If you give the model numbers here, I bet someone would know the exact jumper settings. I'm pretty sure on Maxtor there are two different jumperings for standalone master and master with slave attached. Depending on your PC mobo and bios, it may or may not boot with improper jumpering.
(Of course, you may already know all this, I'm just throwing it out there in the hope that it helps) |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
The drive was originally an external usb 320gb maxtor model
I removed the usb to ide controller and took out the IDE drive from inside (which is a seagate barracuda)
Its certainly the drive which is damaged. I have tried it in two different desktops (and removed all other drives/cd rom etc
The usb to ide controller works fine. it powers other devices no problem.
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
Ok. After some research it was suggested that the main problem may be a blown diode (ST BUX Cxxx) which is located inbetween the 12v and Gnd power. Apparantly seagate drives are known to have this fuse blown
Furthermore, this causes massive draw in power (eg 150w) etc hence the reason why the computer is not turning on
It was mentioned that this diode can be 'clipped' out as a temporary measure to get the drive working which in turn would quickly allow me to copy all the data across.
How do i clip out such a small component? and would i need to replace it with anything (eg wire etc) or just remove it? The user forum mentioned that this can just be clipped out, did not state that something had to be placed there as a replacement?
I may as well give this a go. Certainly dont want to spend thousands on data recovery or the risk of some PC world 'techie' to format the drive |
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Frantic
Registered: Mar 2003
Posts: 1647 |
Although I sympathize with you in your problematic situation, I am not sure if this discussion belongs on CSDb? Feel free to disregard my comment if you think otherwise... |
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