HDD failure

J

John

Guest
Hi

I need the part number (the actual code printed on the diode) and the
orientation of a diode on the PCB for a Seagate 250GB drive model number
ST3250620AS.

The diode is actually burnt. I think it is a protection diode and maybe by
replacing it I can resurrect the drive. If anybody has on of these drives
please let me know if you can help. I will supply a photo to your email
address so you can see which diode I need the part number for.



Thanks for you help
 
I think you'll find that is a monolithic capacitor...simply remove it.

I had a Samsung drive short out this component very recently.
The component was located directly across power and ground.
When I touched the part, it fell from the board. A small cleaning
and the drive operated as usual.



"John" <trueblueace@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:47c0c7ee$0$17825$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
Hi

I need the part number (the actual code printed on the diode) and the
orientation of a diode on the PCB for a Seagate 250GB drive model number
ST3250620AS.

The diode is actually burnt. I think it is a protection diode and maybe by
replacing it I can resurrect the drive. If anybody has on of these drives
please let me know if you can help. I will supply a photo to your email
address so you can see which diode I need the part number for.



Thanks for you help
Click to expand...
 
"Lord Garth" <lgarth@tantalus.net> wrote in
news:CZ4wj.13312$0w.11@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net:
"John" <trueblueace@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:47c0c7ee$0$17825$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
Hi
I need the part number (the actual code printed on the diode) and
the
orientation of a diode on the PCB for a Seagate 250GB drive model
number ST3250620AS.
The diode is actually burnt. I think it is a protection diode and
maybe by replacing it I can resurrect the drive. If anybody has on of
these drives please let me know if you can help. I will supply a
photo to your email address so you can see which diode I need the
part number for.
I think you'll find that is a monolithic capacitor...simply remove it.
I had a Samsung drive short out this component very recently.
The component was located directly across power and ground.
When I touched the part, it fell from the board. A small cleaning
and the drive operated as usual.
Click to expand...
I'm coming in late to this thread, but I recognise the problem. I
had three seagate drives go on me recently with the same symptoms.

After digging around for details and such and not getting far I
reverted to plan 'B': find another dead (or cheaper) seagate drive
and pinch the diode you need off that. They're oriented in different
ways on different drives, but they all seem to have the same circuit.

I repaired three drives with bits pinched from pretty much random
other drives. They all worked fine.


HTH,

GB
--
..sig
 
On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:24:05 +1100, "John" <trueblueace@hotmail.com>
put finger to keyboard and composed:

I need the part number (the actual code printed on the diode) and the
orientation of a diode on the PCB for a Seagate 250GB drive model number
ST3250620AS.
Click to expand...
Does this help?
http://img.techlabs.by/img/125417.jpg

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I managed to fix the drive by removing the
diode and replaced it with a similar one from another drive. The diode was a
protection diode to protect against applying reverse polarity 5V to the
drive i.e cathode to 5V anode to gnd. It was actually cracked open and
burnt.

Thanks again for all you replies


"Franc Zabkar" <fzabkar@iinternode.on.net> wrote in message
news:k192s3thr924djkhqbb87j70prn2n1nthu@4ax.com...
On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:24:05 +1100, "John" <trueblueace@hotmail.com
put finger to keyboard and composed:

I need the part number (the actual code printed on the diode) and the
orientation of a diode on the PCB for a Seagate 250GB drive model number
ST3250620AS.

Does this help?
http://img.techlabs.by/img/125417.jpg

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
Click to expand...
 
On Feb 24, 12:24 pm, "John" <trueblue...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Hi

I need the part number (the actual code printed on the diode) and the
orientation of a diode on the PCB for a Seagate 250GB drive model number
ST3250620AS.
Click to expand...
You do know that the modern Seagate models have a 5 year warranty? If
the failure wasn't due to you doing something silly like forcing the
power connector the wrong way around then you should be able to make a
claim. Just be aware that they send you back a reconditioned drive
which I presume is a Frankenstein collection of working/within
tolerance parts reassembled into a complete drive.

Anyway, this is more for next time - by replacing that diode you've
probably voided the warranty on the current drive. ;-P
 
rowan194 wrote:
On Feb 24, 12:24 pm, "John" <trueblue...@hotmail.com> wrote:
You do know that the modern Seagate models have a 5 year warranty?
Click to expand...
I've had experience with Seagate's worthless warrantees. After I paid
nearly half the price of a new drive to have it shipped to Singapore
to be replaced/repaired under warrantee, the new one failed after just
2 weeks, and Seagate failed for 3 months to answer any form of contact.
Direct phonecalls to the distributors produced nothing, emails were
ignored, even threats of legal action. Nada.

The warrantee in question was 3-fold, 3 months return to the retailer,
12 months to the local distributor, 3 years to Singapore at my cost.
The drive failed at 13 months, as did a very large %age of that model.

Needless to say, I'll never, NEVER, buy another Seagate product.

Clifford Heath.
 
John wrote:
Thanks for the replies guys. I managed to fix the drive by removing
the diode and replaced it with a similar one from another drive. The
diode was a protection diode to protect against applying reverse
polarity 5V to the drive i.e cathode to 5V anode to gnd. It was
actually cracked open and burnt.
Click to expand...

..... In which case it may have been a shunt diode, and should not have
killed your drive unless it shorted when it burned. Unless you apply
reverse power, it's effectively not there anyway...


geoff
 
"John" <trueblueace@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:47c290f8$0$8437$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
Thanks for the replies guys. I managed to fix the drive by removing the
diode and replaced it with a similar one from another drive. The diode was
a
protection diode to protect against applying reverse polarity 5V to the
drive i.e cathode to 5V anode to gnd. It was actually cracked open and
burnt.

Thanks again for all you replies
Click to expand...
Good job....
 
"Clifford Heath" <no@spam.please.net> wrote in message
news:47c32b7d$0$18606$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
rowan194 wrote:
On Feb 24, 12:24 pm, "John" <trueblue...@hotmail.com> wrote:
You do know that the modern Seagate models have a 5 year warranty?

I've had experience with Seagate's worthless warrantees. After I paid
nearly half the price of a new drive to have it shipped to Singapore
to be replaced/repaired under warrantee, the new one failed after just
2 weeks, and Seagate failed for 3 months to answer any form of contact.
Direct phonecalls to the distributors produced nothing, emails were
ignored, even threats of legal action. Nada.

The warrantee in question was 3-fold, 3 months return to the retailer,
12 months to the local distributor, 3 years to Singapore at my cost.
The drive failed at 13 months, as did a very large %age of that model.

Needless to say, I'll never, NEVER, buy another Seagate product.

Clifford Heath.
Click to expand...
Better make that a Maxtor as well since Seagate now owns them!

Your experience is odd, I returned a SCSI 72GB drive after 4 years
of operation. It was replaced and the unit is in daily operation. Shipping
to Seagate was at my cost but it was not to Singapore. Perhaps that is
the nearest to Australia, where as mine was within the USA.
 
"Clifford Heath" <no@spam.please.net> wrote in message
news:47c32b7d$0$18606$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...
rowan194 wrote:
On Feb 24, 12:24 pm, "John" <trueblue...@hotmail.com> wrote:
You do know that the modern Seagate models have a 5 year warranty?

I've had experience with Seagate's worthless warrantees. After I paid
nearly half the price of a new drive to have it shipped to Singapore
to be replaced/repaired under warrantee, the new one failed after just
2 weeks, and Seagate failed for 3 months to answer any form of contact.
Direct phonecalls to the distributors produced nothing, emails were
ignored, even threats of legal action. Nada.

The warrantee in question was 3-fold, 3 months return to the retailer,
12 months to the local distributor, 3 years to Singapore at my cost.
The drive failed at 13 months, as did a very large %age of that model.

Needless to say, I'll never, NEVER, buy another Seagate product.

Clifford Heath.
Click to expand...
There was a rumour a few years ago that a shipment had been dropped at the
dockside (that was before drives became so shock-tolerant) and so numbers of
drives failed prematurely.
 
On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:56:29 +1100, Clifford Heath
<no@spam.please.net> put finger to keyboard and composed:

rowan194 wrote:
On Feb 24, 12:24 pm, "John" <trueblue...@hotmail.com> wrote:
You do know that the modern Seagate models have a 5 year warranty?

I've had experience with Seagate's worthless warrantees. After I paid
nearly half the price of a new drive to have it shipped to Singapore
to be replaced/repaired under warrantee, the new one failed after just
2 weeks, and Seagate failed for 3 months to answer any form of contact.
Direct phonecalls to the distributors produced nothing, emails were
ignored, even threats of legal action. Nada.

The warrantee in question was 3-fold, 3 months return to the retailer,
12 months to the local distributor, 3 years to Singapore at my cost.
The drive failed at 13 months, as did a very large %age of that model.

Needless to say, I'll never, NEVER, buy another Seagate product.

Clifford Heath.
Click to expand...
IIRC, I sent my dud Seagate drive to Synnex. The replacement has been
working fine and came with a full 5 year warranty.

See http://www.synnex.com.au/Default.aspx?tabid=188

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
 
On Feb 26, 7:56 am, Clifford Heath <n...@spam.please.net> wrote:
rowan194 wrote:
On Feb 24, 12:24 pm, "John" <trueblue...@hotmail.com> wrote:
You do know that the modern Seagate models have a 5 year warranty?

I've had experience with Seagate's worthless warrantees. After I paid
nearly half the price of a new drive to have it shipped to Singapore
to be replaced/repaired under warrantee, the new one failed after just
2 weeks, and Seagate failed for 3 months to answer any form of contact.
Direct phonecalls to the distributors produced nothing, emails were
ignored, even threats of legal action. Nada.
Click to expand...
I've also had a bad experience with Seagate. From a purchase of 4
drives in late 2005, all of them had failed by about mid 2007. One of
the reconditioned drives they sent was also faulty out of the box!
Eventually I asked them to replace the set with something more current
as there was obviously something very wrong with that model of drive
(and possibly my setup - although I had replaced the power supply and
eventually all other parts)

Now one of the newer (but still reco'd) drives has failed, I'm asking
for a cash refund equal to the current market value of the drives.
Haven't had much luck so far, their system seems to have inserted my
emails into a ticket system but immediately closed them.

I can't begin to imagine the amount of computer time I've wasted
dropped into DOS so I can run Seatools, doing extra incremental
backups while my array is degraded lest another drive fail and render
it useless, putting up with slow-as-shit degraded RAID5 having to read
from 3 drives just to load a 512 byte sector while I wait for the
replacement to be mailed back.

BTW, the model I had problems with was ST3300831AS (300GB SATA). Do
you have details of the model you had experience with?

Needless to say, I'll never, NEVER, buy another Seagate product.
Click to expand...
Ditto. I've replaced the 4 x 300GB Seagate drives with 3 x 750GB WD. I
had heard bad things about WD but ironically I had 2 x 320GB WD drives
in the same computer that all of the Seagates failed in... they never
missed a beat and they're still in use now.
 
rowan194 wrote:
On Feb 26, 7:56 am, Clifford Heath <n...@spam.please.net> wrote:
rowan194 wrote:
On Feb 24, 12:24 pm, "John" <trueblue...@hotmail.com> wrote:
You do know that the modern Seagate models have a 5 year warranty?
I've had experience with Seagate's worthless warrantees. After I paid
nearly half the price of a new drive to have it shipped to Singapore
to be replaced/repaired under warrantee, the new one failed after just
2 weeks, and Seagate failed for 3 months to answer any form of contact.
Direct phonecalls to the distributors produced nothing, emails were
ignored, even threats of legal action. Nada.

I've also had a bad experience with Seagate. From a purchase of 4
drives in late 2005, all of them had failed by about mid 2007. One of
the reconditioned drives they sent was also faulty out of the box!
Click to expand...
<snip>

You can have a bad run with *any* brand HDD.

You can read identical stories about all other brands - only the dates
seem to differentiate them.

I myself had a bad run with IBM drives several years ago.
Had to send them off to Singapore (IIRC)in very specific packaging.

Also, the quality of their warranty processes seem to vary from time to
time as well.

I did have a Seagate fail on me approx. two years ago, and that was
dealt with within Oz, and damned quick too as I recall.

I have a 320GB Maxtor here somewhere with a burned out chip (not a
diode)... one of a batch of six I bought a few years back.

So if anyone thinks they can avoid this sort of problem by sticking to a
certain brand, well good luck :)
 
On 26/02/2008 17:18 rowan194 wrote:
On Feb 26, 4:39 pm, Franc Zabkar <fzab...@iinternode.on.net> wrote:
IIRC, I sent my dud Seagate drive to Synnex. The replacement has been
working fine and came with a full 5 year warranty.

Seehttp://www.synnex.com.au/Default.aspx?tabid=188

Are they an authorised Seagate distributor or more a large retailer
which supports resellers? I've never seen a Seagate warranty setup
like that - according to my local shop after 12 months I have to deal
with Seagate direct, and the drives they return are second hand/
reconditioned rather than a new replacement.

If Synnex are indeed an AU distributor for Seagate then I may actually
be able to get someone to respond to my complaint...

BTW, AFAIK a replacement Seagate drive only comes with the balance of
the original warranty, which is itself a few months under 5 years
since it's based on manufacture or ship date rather than purchase date.
Click to expand...

According to the Seagate website, the Aussie distributors are:

Achieva Tech Australia Pte Ltd 61-2-9742-3288
Ingram Micro Australia Pty Ltd 1300-65-33-33
Synnex Australia Pty Ltd 61-3-8542-8888


I got a 40GB Seagate Barracuda drive in my PC when I bought it in
2002. It's got 15,009 hours and 4,899 startup cycles on it according to
Disk Checkup and still running perfectly. It's outlasted a Samsung 80GB
drive which suddenly developed a lot of uncorrectable sectors after a
few years. Not all Seagate drives are unreliable.
 
"rowan194" <googlegroups@sensation.net.au> wrote in message
news:e8fe9ee4-bdb6-410c-ad1a-eedfa29fc660@d62g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
On Feb 26, 7:56 am, Clifford Heath <n...@spam.please.net> wrote:
rowan194 wrote:
On Feb 24, 12:24 pm, "John" <trueblue...@hotmail.com> wrote:
You do know that the modern Seagate models have a 5 year warranty?

I've had experience with Seagate's worthless warrantees. After I paid
nearly half the price of a new drive to have it shipped to Singapore
to be replaced/repaired under warrantee, the new one failed after just
2 weeks, and Seagate failed for 3 months to answer any form of contact.
Direct phonecalls to the distributors produced nothing, emails were
ignored, even threats of legal action. Nada.

I've also had a bad experience with Seagate. From a purchase of 4
drives in late 2005, all of them had failed by about mid 2007. One of
the reconditioned drives they sent was also faulty out of the box!
Eventually I asked them to replace the set with something more current
as there was obviously something very wrong with that model of drive
(and possibly my setup - although I had replaced the power supply and
eventually all other parts)

Now one of the newer (but still reco'd) drives has failed, I'm asking
for a cash refund equal to the current market value of the drives.
Haven't had much luck so far, their system seems to have inserted my
emails into a ticket system but immediately closed them.

I can't begin to imagine the amount of computer time I've wasted
dropped into DOS so I can run Seatools, doing extra incremental
backups while my array is degraded lest another drive fail and render
it useless, putting up with slow-as-shit degraded RAID5 having to read
from 3 drives just to load a 512 byte sector while I wait for the
replacement to be mailed back.

BTW, the model I had problems with was ST3300831AS (300GB SATA). Do
you have details of the model you had experience with?

Needless to say, I'll never, NEVER, buy another Seagate product.

Ditto. I've replaced the 4 x 300GB Seagate drives with 3 x 750GB WD. I
had heard bad things about WD but ironically I had 2 x 320GB WD drives
in the same computer that all of the Seagates failed in... they never
missed a beat and they're still in use now.
Click to expand...

But my experience has been 10 Seagate drives without a single failure so
far. One WD drive failed in under a year (replaced under warranty and
instantly resold) And I just bought a WD laptop drive which was DOA, still
trying to get it replaced.

No more Western Digital for me!

MrT.
 
On Feb 26, 4:39 pm, Franc Zabkar <fzab...@iinternode.on.net> wrote:
IIRC, I sent my dud Seagate drive to Synnex. The replacement has been
working fine and came with a full 5 year warranty.

Seehttp://www.synnex.com.au/Default.aspx?tabid=188
Click to expand...
Are they an authorised Seagate distributor or more a large retailer
which supports resellers? I've never seen a Seagate warranty setup
like that - according to my local shop after 12 months I have to deal
with Seagate direct, and the drives they return are second hand/
reconditioned rather than a new replacement.

If Synnex are indeed an AU distributor for Seagate then I may actually
be able to get someone to respond to my complaint...

BTW, AFAIK a replacement Seagate drive only comes with the balance of
the original warranty, which is itself a few months under 5 years
since it's based on manufacture or ship date rather than purchase date.
 
On Feb 26, 5:43 pm, "Mr.T" <MrT@home> wrote:
"rowan194" <googlegro...@sensation.net.au> wrote in message
But my experience has been 10 Seagate drives without a single failure so
far. One WD drive failed in under a year (replaced under warranty and
instantly resold) And I just bought a WD laptop drive which was DOA, still
trying to get it replaced.

No more Western Digital for me!
Click to expand...
That's the problem, everyone has their own little story to tell. ;)
Apart from well known design faults such as the IBM DeathStar most
failures are probably isolated cases which don't necessarily reflect
on the manufacturer's overall quality control.

In this instance, 6 dead drives was enough for me. It went something
like...

- purchase 4 drives
- one never worked. No spinup, DOA. replaced by retailer.
- one reported S.M.A.R.T. errors less than 24 hours later. replaced by
retailer.
.... some time in between here ...
- one suddenly developed 99+ bad sectors (99 being the limit of
Seagate's error reporting). replaced with Seagate reco.
- reco made some interesting clicking noises when first powered on and
reported a S.M.A.R.T. event within less than an hour. This was
replaced with another.
.... few more months here ...
- one started clicking and generally misbehaving. At this point I went
beyond the RMA system and got someone to agree to send out 4 different
model drives to replace the whole lot. I said that if another failed I
would be asking for a cash refund.
.... few more months ...
- one of those started playing up a couple of months ago. Had enough
of Seagate, I just want some cash to cover the cost of the WD drives
I've replaced them with.

No one at Seagate ever asked about my setup or tried to figure out why
they were failing...

BTW my only other experience with failure was an IBM 60GB drive around
2003ish, it wasn't a mechanical failure but apparently some obscure
firmware bug which writes to the disk while the heads are still
seeking across it. Bam, instant bunch of bad sectors and the data is
virtually unrecoverable because it's nuked several sectors on each
track rather than just a relatively small continuous portion. After a
low level format it works just fine but obviously the data is not
safe.

Seagate is the first drive I've used in about 20 years (not that I've
used each of them for that long ;) ) that has failed mechanically.
Just my experience, of course.
 
Bob Parker wrote:
Not all Seagate drives are unreliable.
Click to expand...
Not all drives are unreliable, that's a given.

Not all companies are unreliable either, but the
ones who've proven themselves so, simply won't
get my business.

It's not about the drives, it's about the company.
 
On 26/02/2008 22:57 Clifford Heath wrote:
Bob Parker wrote:
Not all Seagate drives are unreliable.

Not all drives are unreliable, that's a given.

Not all companies are unreliable either, but the
ones who've proven themselves so, simply won't
get my business.

It's not about the drives, it's about the company.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I know what you mean and I agree. I've got a mental list of
companies which have given me a difficult time and/or sell products I'd
never trust again. :-(
 
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