Lucky save, HDD with shorted SATA connector - LFC
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- Опубликовано: 22 янв 2025
- This started out as an assumed lost-cause hard drive, but just as I was literally on the phone to the customer to say 'sorry your data has gone unless you want to send it to a lab' I remembered That One Time I Saw A HDD With A Dead Protection Diode and figured I'd try my luck.
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Regarding the Tweezers I mention in this video, I was mistaken - they're LCR tweezers, not hot tweezers. So not actually useful for this job.
Adamant IT yes you can see them in action @electronicsrepairschool
A better option to remove smt components is with a hot-air rework station. Basically it produces a small stream of hot air to melt the solder so you can remove it. Alternative you can use solder wick (braided copper) to remove solder from the PCB and component so it can be removed. That said the hot-air station is the preferred tool to rework PCB boards.
I've seen there are ~$15 solder iron tweezers online now on eBay and I assume Aliexpress. I ordered two additional SH72's with some J style tips and printed a holder on a local fab lab 3D printer to make portable tweezers. Haven't gotten around to assembling yet, since don't have the need. I'm still working on outdoors projects. Am planning to either use PlastiDip or Type 2 silicone coating on the 3D printed part also to seal and provide a little better grip. Thanks for sharing... makes me want to check my bin of HD's to see what might still have some life left.
Hey adamant IT. Quick question, if I have a 1080ti where 1 fan might be shorted, and the card only shows black screen when booting, what options do I have? Have disconnected all fans, but it wont boot. Is there something I could swap out or check with a meter?
@@runehansen278 If the fans have three wires (speed feedback), its possible the card will not run with the fans disconnected. One option is to try running the fans (12VDC or 5VDC depending on fan voltage) to see if they work. Also check the fan power pins to see if the card is supplying power to the fans.
Hello there! I know we don't know each other, but I wanted to let you know, that you saved my memories of over 12 years I already thought were lost. I had a similar HardDrive which did not work anymore and I thought let's give it a shot. Fortunately I already had a multimeter as I started a little with microcontrollers and Arduino. I then watched another video on how to set a multimeter to continuity mode ( I am a nooby with electronics) and had the same issue. This is why I love the internet. Anyway I just wanted to let you know that you made my day! ❤ Dankeschön from Germany 😊
Massive thank you for this guide! I found myself in a similar situation with my backup drive failing to spin and a short on the 12v line. Informed by your content, I ventured to remove the diode, and to my delight, the diode was shorted out of the circuit and... I'm now successfully recovering my data!
As someone with minimal experience in electronics, particularly with circuit boards and soldering, I was initially apprehensive. However, your clear explanations and practical tips made the process not only achievable but genuinely enjoyable. Channels like yours are a treasure trove for novices like myself, empowering us to tackle technical challenges with confidence and enthusiasm. Your work is not only educational but truly life-saving regarding data recovery. Keep up the fantastic work - you're making a significant impact!
where and how did you find replacement diode ? can you find a compatible one in any old devices pcb ?
@Adamant_IT Thank you, Graham! I received a laptop yesterday, which would not POST when the SATA 1TB Seagate HDD was connected. I removed the HDD, removed the PCB from the HDD, and checked for shorts. The 5V rail was shorted all over the PCB. I injected voltage, starting with 1V and 1A, increasing to 3V and 1A. The diode got hot, which caused me to remember YOUR video! I removed the diode, and the HDD worked perfectly after I reassembled it and connected it to the SATA port. Since I have no use for this HDD, I did this purely as an experiment and for my training experience. Thanks ever so much for planting THIS video into my brain for future use, two years later.
hi Adam! glad you decided to undo everything just to show us!
His name is Graham :)))
@@comicsanz97 I thought he was actually Adam Ant 1980s pop star which is why he looks like a highwayman.
@@reggiedixon2 adamant (adj): unshakable or insistent especially in maintaining a position or opinion : unyielding
@@markanderson2904 Thanks I think, English is my first language so I am well aware what adamant means and I quote: "Stand and deliver, your money or your life"
I'm so thankful that you decided to make and upload this video! While I did not have issues with a dying diode, I DID have a drive that dumped it's partition table mid-backup. I lost ~8 years of music collection from various audio outlets, some of which are now defunct. CGSecurity's software managed to find the partition table, re-write it, and allowed me to recover all of my music again!
I've only been subscribed for a short while, and you've definitely piqued my interest with these oddball repairs.
Thank you so much!
I had a TVS diode go on a WD from my parents' PVR which had a PSU pumping out too many volts on the 5V rail - luckily this meant I could recover the recordings - I went down the road of replacing the entire board and swapped out the BIOS chip which matches the drive. Deep diving into it I learnt that the two TVS diodes for 5V and 12V work in conjunction with R64 and R67 (0 Ohms) so that the current shunts down to ground via the diodes and either blows the diode and/or the resistor to prevent damage to components further downstream - very sensible design IMO. Like you say - get the data off ASAP! Nice tip on using testdisk for MBR recovery :)
Graham, you rock! Your vids are so educational. I appreciate that you take PC hardware troubleshooting to the next level from where most people would be comfortable. I'm sure that you are inspiring many people to attempt repairs that they might otherwise give up on. I hate to see technology go into the trash for want of a minor repair
Hi Adam,
Great video! Just watching you solder and un-solder things has helped me massively as I was really weak with my soldering skills.
Glad to hear! I'm no soldering master by any means, but if I'm giving people the courage to have a go and practise for themselves, then mission accomplished!
4:45 You could have also talked about rust accumulation over time here. Right above you left hand finder are the contacts pads that connect the board with the HDD head. Overtime those pads can develop a layer of rust (Your HDD already have some. Its that yellow discoloration) and this can cause the HDD to have a lot of R/W errors. This can make a HDD look like it has bad sectors or is dyeing but in reality its just a bad connection between the Head and the Board.
Cleaning it can bring the HDD back to fully function.
Saved 2 Seagate 2TB HDDs by cleaning it.
@Mr Guru There are many types of rust. Its defensively rust just not the usual green/blue rust that you usually see from water damage.
very interesting.. it's also visible around the 3 screw holes @4:41.. what causes oxidation to occur gradually like that?
@@duroxkilo
As far as I know the type of rust that aren't chemical are related to heat, humidity, and oxygen concentration and the type of metal. Also the flow of electricity can accelerate the process.
Oxidation will happen overtime to all metals. Some are more resistant than others.
Aluminium for example is very resistant to oxidation because it rapidly form a thin aluminium oxide layer that impedes the metal from entering in contact with oxygen.
For those kind of applications the best metal to use is Gold. That is why Memory and CPU terminals are usually Gold plated. Gold is very resistant to oxidation and a excellent conductor but its also expensive. Idk what metal they are using to plate those terminals but due to their color its definitely not gold.
Excellent video!
English is not my native language (i'm greek), but with this clear pronunciation and analytic speech, i understood everything. Thank you.
Thank you very very much. WD 4TB Black saved thanks to your tutorial. Very simple fix. Have been looking everywhere for the correct replacement diode. As shown above, removing this works just fine :)
Wow, that's a nice fix! And the channel is going strong. Dutch regards, Nico
Thank you. I m seasons electronic with not much hand-on experience but your place is the place I go lately for pointers and helpful guides. Been following for a while n today u gained another subscriber. Luv n thanks all the way from Malaysia of South East Asia ❤️🇲🇾
Testdisk sounds useful. Thank You!
I just like to add that your little trick with test disk at the end there where you press write , made me lose access to my entire drive and now it doesn't show up at all even in test disk. So thanks for that.
I never used that tool but it looks like you might have selected the wrong option where he chose MBR.
@ no. I selected the intel option. It found the NTFS partition information. I pressed write. And now the disk is no longer recognised at all. Not even as RAW or anything. Lost access to the entire drive.
Great video, first time I hear about testdisk, definitely will use it for further disk restorations 👌👌
Absolutely brilliant graham,thankyou for
Posting,i really enjoyed this,thankyou
Most importante is you made this job with simple tools that anyone can atleast copy or rapair at home with simple soldering iron.... this is one of best how to do chanel.
Had a power surge and blew three hard drives so was looking at this regarding for ideas. While watching I also got the answer to why my 8tb IronWolf would only let me format half of it, MBR, changed it to GPT and bam let me have the full drive. Thank you! Liked and subbed!
I removed the diode on an old 80gb drive today and was able to remove the data. Thanks a bunch for sharing!
THANKS FOR THIS!
After watching yours and HDD Recovery Services' video (and a some more googling since I had a different pcb layout)
I got my 4TB drive working again!!!! (I gotta order a 12v TVS & fuse tho)
THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO!
Yeah It worked for me. Thanks for your great explanation. After i watched your video, i did all what you showed and my HDD is back now.
Thank you for making this Video!!! You Recover my HDD after i pluged in accident a 21 Power supply to my 12V Sata/USB adapter.
This exact solution saved me something from 400-1000 dollars. Brilliant solution. And it worked. Thank you so much.
Great video. Thanks for taking the time for us laymen.
I enjoy this kind of videos which are more down to earth than some other it repairing computer videos, where everything has to be top of the line with super expensive graphics cards and water liquid cooling otherwise is just utterly garbage.
Thank you. I watch your channel from time to time and I was lucky that you tackled Testdisk because I kinda needed someone to show me how to use it to recover a corrupt microSD card with video files in it. Thanks to your quick guide, I recovered those important clips and even past/erased ones.
Thanks for your video. It has helped me. I did what you did and now I am happy and my harddrive is working. One more time Thanks.
Thank you so much for this video. I've just removed a diode from the PCB of a Samsung HDD (it shattered when I gripped it with the tweezers) and am now, hopefully, recovering the data :)
Just a heads up (to viewers and author alike), @14:01 DO NOT write to the actual disk!
That is very bad practice: If there are deeper faults with the drive you may make the drive forever unrecoverable. The customer will be less than happy if any future attempts to recover data (by say a specialist lab/company) are thwarted by your inadvisable write to the failing drive.
What you actually want to do: perform a sector by sector copy to a doner hdd or image file. Testdisk will also work against an image file (the linux and windows versions have been used this way by this commentor)
OMG it worked for me!! recovering the data right now :) thanks so much for this!
One thing that might help you, instead of rebooting/replugging the disk to have the new partition scheme read, you might just use a 'partprobe' command which forces kernel to read the partition scheme from the disk again, eg. 'partprobe /dev/sdaX'
Thanks for the thought provoking content!
Thank you so much! Removed diode and the drive works!!!
Thank you, after pluging in a cheap molex to sata power the wrong way and shorting the drive, thought it was toast. A waste of 4 hrs on a Saturday morning, but i got the data back.
LifeSaver!! Thanks for pointing this pesky little diode out for me! I could smell his magic soul release even though i took caution and used a 9v supply because I couldnt find my original WD 12v psu. Im up and running now with a dedicated sata/usb converter kit on piggy back. But I found this video from a link in the comments of a dissasembly vid and it turned out to pay off BIG TIME!!!! My rather ancient TB is a TB nonetheless, of basically my entire digital life memory! THANKS from Texas! Cheers!
Great vid as always! And nice Reimu background ;)
Fantastic work thank you again graham god bless you always and stay safe.
I think it's a TVS diode which it's commonly used on power rails to protect from static and OV
Awesome info, Great video, Thanks.
Thats pretty cool. Never hear of TestDisk before. I'll definitely have to play with this one!
Good trouble shooting. Many times a a multi-meter is all that you need along with focused rational thinking. Reminds me of my days on a test bench in the Marines working on power supplies. Diodes are usually part of power supply problems ie, not turning on. You might want to get yourself a nice table mount vice grip to hold the things in place while soldering. Also, I would wick away that extra solder on the board before reinstalling. It can cause other problems.
A very good warning about swapping out an enclosed drive into a desktop thinking that the enclosure is broken.
Thank you so much for the video!!!
Subbed!
Thanks for this video, it has been helpful.
Interesting video. I have some old drives I have not used in a while, and I recently plugged them into a caddy, and they kept cutting the power to the caddy, I guess some short circuit protection. In another caddy I started to smell burning, and saw smoke after a few seconds. Both caddyies had decent power adaptors, and work with other drives. In fact, one was a brand new WD caddy I had after removing it's original drive.
Of the 4 drives I tried 2 of them, with the same behaviour, and not wanting to mess up the caddies I stopped. I just checked, and the first 2 are shorting the right side sata pin onto pin 4 and 6 (not 5). I see the same thing on both drives. On drive 4 I think it's the same, and drive 3 seems OK, pin 1 not shorting to 4 and 6. I found a component, KVP 47A, and it seems to act like a diode, on drive 3, but not 1,2 and 4.
I stumbled across your video by pure chance, in my RUclips recommendations, watched it casually, and when I saw, took a look at my drives. I might remove the KVP 47A component on one of the drives, just for kicks, since these are ancient 250GB SATA Maxtor drives I don't care about anyway, ideally I'd like to securely erase any remaining data prior to disposal, or letting someone else find a use for them.
Good analysis, I learned a lot! Thanks.
Thank you so much, just saved a 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD with your help :D
What a neat find! Saved the customer a lot of money too! Also, loving that Reimu wallpaper at the end. I get giddy when I see people representing Touhou these days.
👌I'm not super into the games or lore, but there's a lot of incredible art from the Touhou fandom
@@Adamant_IT I am in the exact same boat, the art is amazing! Some of the music remixes are good too!
shes alive! changed the diode and 0 ohm resistor, works like new.
Thanks a lot !! I was also facing the same problem, and solved it removing this diode too ! Lucky like you :))
how to check the drive to see if anything was written to it before it stopped working? the white light on my wd external drive doesnt come on, it worked on my old pc, not on new one, i tried a laptop i couldn't figure out. please help. I can still rma wd but dont want to until i verify nothing is on the drive.
I love you did this video. I've been watching your channel and had some of my pc components fried by voltage spikes from my electricity provider. had exactly this problem with my HDD and hoped you had a video. couldnt find it and figured this out and made it work.
Hmmm.. I have a about half a dozen old disks in a box that went bad. Time to check them out. One or two of them had nasty scratching sounds though.
How. Proud of you my man
Didn't quite catch what you said @ 8:59, but if it was Hot Tweezers by Mini (as in Miniware) they aren't Hot Tweezers but Tweezed Digital Multimeter.
I have a hard drive that reads file but when I’m about to transfer the files to another HDD fails why?
I've seen zener diodes being used as voltage regulators before, particularly on a Commodore 64 for powering the cassette drive motors. The rail put out somewhere between 10-12V I believe but the tape drive needed something like 7 or 8 volts, can't remember as it was years ago but that's what the zener was rated at and since it starts conducting at that voltage it clamped the voltage down to the needed amount because everything "excess" got shorted to ground basically.
Very effective however if it fails open circuit it unleashes the non regulated voltage to the motors, thankfully it survived when I accidentally did that. It was shorted initially which is why the tape drive wasn't spinning
I really like watching your videos!!! :)
When you were going through the folders "s.....s....s....s.....s" I was thinking 'oh no, it's porn isn't it?'
I was asked to look at one of these contraptions for someone and the directory structure was exactly the same - baffling. I understand that they are designed to be used by clueless people but there is no need to make things deliberately obscure.
Epic moment!
I have a hard drive that is spinning but its not detected by the machine. Its not detected even in BIOS. What could be scenario?
Don't you love when the computer repairman has a laptop with a black stripe on the screen?
Good video nonetheless, you are an excellent technician and natural teacher.
Good on you 😎👍
MacBook screens are expensive 😭😅
@@Adamant_IT LOL, tell me about it, I used to fix computers few years back and my own laptop was falling apart.
@@Adamant_IT BTW, the black stripe seems more like a problem with the screen connector or the ribbon cable, maybe loose or dirty.
Hi there. I watched your Video and i has a HDD with exact the same error. i removed the z-diode and see, the hard disk works again. thank you for that Video!
Man, my hard drive is the same issue I believe. It was shorted and smoked on me. And I’ve asked 2 local techs about it and they said it’s a LAB job. I wish you where here in the states. Because seems like you know how to fix it
Hi ,i have an samsung ssd t7 and i want to connect it with my iphone with a second source of power (60 watt charging port) so now its not working just the blue light start few seconds and turns off. Is there any chance to fix it ??
this is my issue, that i cant fix!!...i have a seagate 2tb with a dead pcb!...for month i tryed to fix but i cant locate the problem! there was no 12V signal! every few weeks i pick up this pcb and try!
for the most time, i miss out the two "zero ohms resistors"..they have marks in the middle and u cant read the "0"...there is something that blown this 0 ohms resistors out.I guess these 0ohms are a kind of fuse!
anyway i changed the Diode, but still nothing. No short to ground at all but nothing happens! Drive wont turn on....
Hi there 🙂. I powered a Buffalo NAS with an inversed polarity power supply (connector was wrongly replaced). As a result I grilled the NAS AND the two 4Tb Seagate HDD inside of it. Do you think you can help me replacing the protector in my PCBs? Thanks a lot. Dan
Fantastic sir , exellent
You make great videos
i loved 🥰 your explanations. and very helpful.
Nice sir....Iam preparing ready for my hd recovery....Tq...
Hi adamant i have 2 tb wd purple hdd. It has short circuit in 5volt supply i just remove that protection diode but its still shows short circuit. I had test complete board but nothing find.
Is it work after i remove 12 v TVS diode no need to replace or need to replace tell me 😔😔
Yes, the drive will work without a TVS diode, but this should be treated as "for data recovery only". Do not rely on a drive that has suffered damage like this.
i can not understand i ball k mini lap top motherboard repair
will you please explain
I had a IDE hard drive of 250gb with only 130 hours of run time on the clock, there are no bad sectors on the hard drive what so ever, but one day, i had to backup a laptop, and when i plugged that drive into its supplied adapter, there was smelly black smoke comming out of the enclosure, so i took out the drive, removed the board, and yes, a blown up diode, i replaced that diode, and now, 3 years later, this drive still works perfectly fine, with no bad sectors what so ever
That is Hughely useful to me. I thank you in kind!!
in my case when I start my computer my hard disk say to to and then stop what do you think about it.
Just subscribed, great videos learning a lot :)
Man, I almost forgot how good testdisk was, thank you for reminding me how powerful it is.
Also subscribed and liked your video, awesome work.
Greetings from the "island" of Costa Rica!
P.D: if you actually know where Costa Rica is, you'll know that we ain't an island... lol
Mac is the test machine and Windows is the production machine. Sounds about right!
Just fixed one of these the other day, Looks like the customer plugged in a 19v laptop charger into the 12v in (same plug 5.5x2.5 i think) Luckily the TVS diode blew and saved the drive, I removed the diode and recovered the data.
Thats how mine died today🥲
@Adamant IT - I would like to check my HDD drive before I will plug it to my PC. My HDD drive was plugged to failed PSU so I want to check it. My sata controller on motherboard was shorted by PSU so I should also check data connector on the HDD drive? If yes, how I can do this? Can you make video with tutorial for me? On the data connector we have GND but also minus pins for transmit and receiver. I must know if I should check short between transmit - and GND? If short will be in there this is OK?
little tip: RAW drive can sometimes be readable on Linux.
(without running any tools and\or commands)
thank you for that very help fall
"You put it to another enclosure". That's not always true because 2,5" external drives have dual USB connectors soldered to their board instead of SATA connectors like on regular hard drives you can find in any store.
David M that’s a Toshiba trick 😒
@@steve.Lowles Didn't know that. I saw that on WD drive first.
hi .. i have beeb for the D3 so i will do the same thing like as D3 for you remove ??
In case of any doubts, this protection diode did its job, going to short circuit and saving the rest of the electronic components on the PCB. This is not a regular Zener diode, but the so-called TVS diode or a transil. In case of a voltage spike on input the short circuit to ground causing the faulty PSU to shut down. They can absorb pretty high energy.
yeah they say we can use it without TVS diode but without using it doesnt mean that we are open for new troubles ??
@@seckinseckin3919 For testing/data recovery purpose, it is fine to run without it. Of course, assuming we are using a reliable power source.
Hi could simply allocating a drive letter through admin tools disk manager also Inisalize the unrecognised drive.. I ,at be wrong but it has worked for me at times.
this sucks! i installed some new fans in my pc and the PSU cable i used to plug in on was damaged, it shorted 2x 4TB drives
now i need to wait 2 weeks to get new circuit boards so i can access my data....
I did this and the diode is still suck on there with a bit of the diode melted because I kept inadvertently touched it. There doesn't seem to be much lead to soften up on the sides of the diode. I may have gotten some solder on a component next to it also. I just ordered a mini heat gun. Hoping I didn't damage the pcb. Thanks for the tutorial. Total noob but figured I try it just for kicks.
where we can get wd firmware of this hdd online ..its 2500jb 00READ some one help because i lost my firmware rom ic
Hi...
I got a urgent question about my problem. My Ext HDD gets power and spinning starts. Unfortunately during turn up the RPM the HDD makes a very short noise like a stepper motor. But it's just during startup... and the next is, spin up, click, up, click, up, click....) it seems as it need just an couple millivolts more to get the right speed for mounting in Windows... Do you know what it could be? There is no shorts on pwr connector, thanks in advance
I've got 2 drives that burned because of a weird different power sata cable (mixed the cables of two power supplies), would this have saved my drives? Mine are Seagate Barracuda 2TB
shall i replace a 2tb hdd board which is defective with 1tb hdd board of seagate
I had that issue once so far. Those are called TVS diodes but yeah I guess you could call them zenner diodes as they work pretty much the same.
Today I booted up my pc suddenly I have heard a shortage on my pc and smell a burning device i found, it was my hdd hopefully no gpu no other components were damaged I hope so , by the I have a 800w psu plugged into an electrical extension I don't know what to do.
I remember that a tiny chipset inside that hdd connector was blown up exactly like that one on bottom left at 7:10.
well, im in a similar spot, new psu fried 3 hdds, i was gonna swap the pcbs but i think im gonna check this real quick, just gotta run to the hardware store to get new fuses for my meter because they blew up working on a quad last week, thanks for the idea
hi Adam my HP loptop is not working how can flx is is very old do i need a new key board is not turning on is turn on for one min and turn off maybe the is not working broken graphics card
Good day sir. I would like to ask, is there a way to make a broken sd card again to retrieve some files? My sd card just stop working and no matter what i do it wont show on my pc.. no sign of drive connection or pc detection..
That one would be beyond me I'm afraid, but I'm no recovery expert!