Can high voltage from power supply damage harddrive?

In message JD was
claimed to have wrote:

Was a surge protector used for this computer?

If not, the user was a fool. Electric supplies are
always oscillating up and down and
need taming by the surge protector.

Surge protectors really aren't needed for modern computers, the PSU
should have far more capable surge protection built-in as part of it's
design.

More often than not a surge protector won't catch a surge in time
anyway, although it will usually do a decent enough job of preventing a
fire if some connected device shorts out.

In message mm
was claimed to have wrote:

So, if I could get an identical drive, I could replace the circuit
board myself??? I have 40 years part-time experience in electronic
repairs including soldering.

Maybe. Until recently this was usually possible if you could get an
absolutely identical drive, not only the model number but the software
version too in some cases.

However, modern drives are apparently storing some data on the
controller circuitry itself that makes this type of swap out more
difficult.

Still, if the data is worth the gamble, and if it's a bit of an older
drive you might find replacements on eBay cheap, so it's worth trying.

mm wrote:

I just talked to my friend who gave me the Dell computer, and he said
that his repair guy told him the reason his harddrive failed may (likely?)
have been a surge or something coming from the power supply.

Is this a cause of harddrive failure?

Yes, it can happen.

A common cause?

Nope.

A conceivable cause but really a guess by the repairman.

Depends on whether he worked out that the rails to the hard drive had
been over voltaged like with some visible damage on the drive logic card.

FWIW, the repairman sent the HD somewhere to get the data off, but it
was too dead or something to do that, and now they want 1500 to 3500
dollars to do it the hard way.

FWIW, the mobo still seems good, although w/o the harddrive, it just
displays a few lines and displays a one-line message about no SATA
drive, press f2 to do this, f4 to do that.

Could I turn on the computer and connect a voltmeter to the hardrive power
connector** and watch the needle for a few hours (while I do other things),

Yes, but that may not prove anything, some power
supply glitches can be too short term to see on a meter.

or do I have to watch for weeks to get a good idea?

You really need to have a more fancy multimeter that records the peaks seen on the rails.

Even then it doesnt prove the power supply isnt faulty,
it can happen only very rarely, with a mains surge etc.

**Or do another connector on the same power supply,
since the SATA power connector looks very small?

Yes, its fine to use one of the other molex power connectors thats easier to connect the meter probe to.

mm wrote:
On Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:18:59 -0400, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

On 28/08/2010 8:49 PM, mm wrote:
I just talked to my friend who gave me the Dell computer, and he
said that his repair guy told him the reason his harddrive failed
may (likely?) have been a surge or something coming from the power
supply.

Is this a cause of harddrive failure?

That's possible, but a more likely cause is the exact opposite
situation, where there wasn't enough power coming through the power
supply at the right moment.

A common cause?

A conceivable cause but really a guess by the repairman.

It is a guess, plain and simple.

FWIW, the repairman sent the HD somewhere to get the data off, but
it was too dead or something to do that, and now they want 1500 to
3500 dollars to do it the hard way.

Yes, what he's describing is that the onboard electronics of the
drive are fried. But the data might still be on the mechanical
portion of the hard drive, so a circuit board replacement should do
the trick to get the data again. However, the circuit board
replacement costs thousands of dollars, as he's saying.

So, if I could get an identical drive, I could replace the circuit board myself???

Yes. But the recovery operation should have tried that.

I have 40 years part-time experience in electronic repairs including soldering.

FTR I don't have the drive, but I could get it from my friend.

FWIW, the mobo still seems good, although w/o the harddrive, it just
displays a few lines and displays a one-line message about no SATA
drive, press f2 to do this, f4 to do that.

Could I turn on the computer and connect a voltmeter to the hardrive
power connector** and watch the needle for a few hours (while I do
other things), or do I have to watch for weeks to get a good idea?

**Or do another connector on the same power supply, since the SATA
power connector looks very small?

I assume that the repairman already may have tried putting the SATA
drive into another system. But you could try it yourself and put it
into your own system to see if it works there.

Here, I just mean that to test the power supply, I could watch
the voltage on a voltmeter, with a needle, to see if it varies.

That wont see the shortest spikes and you wont be watching it when the mains surges either.

On 28/08/2010 10:40 PM, mm wrote:
On Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:18:59 -0400, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

On 28/08/2010 8:49 PM, mm wrote:
I just talked to my friend who gave me the Dell computer, and he said
that his repair guy told him the reason his harddrive failed may
(likely?) have been a surge or something coming from the power supply.

Is this a cause of harddrive failure?

That's possible, but a more likely cause is the exact opposite
situation, where there wasn't enough power coming through the power
supply at the right moment.

A common cause?

A conceivable cause but really a guess by the repairman.

It is a guess, plain and simple.

FWIW, the repairman sent the HD somewhere to get the data off, but it
was too dead or something to do that, and now they want 1500 to 3500
dollars to do it the hard way.

Yes, what he's describing is that the onboard electronics of the drive
are fried. But the data might still be on the mechanical portion of the
hard drive, so a circuit board replacement should do the trick to get
the data again. However, the circuit board replacement costs thousands
of dollars, as he's saying.

So, if I could get an identical drive, I could replace the circuit
board myself??? I have 40 years part-time experience in electronic
repairs including soldering.

Yes, that's conceivable. But remember if it doesn't work, you got two
dead drives instead.

FWIW, the mobo still seems good, although w/o the harddrive, it just
displays a few lines and displays a one-line message about no SATA
drive, press f2 to do this, f4 to do that.

Could I turn on the computer and connect a voltmeter to the hardrive
power connector** and watch the needle for a few hours (while I do
other things), or do I have to watch for weeks to get a good idea?

**Or do another connector on the same power supply, since the SATA
power connector looks very small?

I assume that the repairman already may have tried putting the SATA
drive into another system. But you could try it yourself and put it into
your own system to see if it works there.

Here, I just mean that to test the power supply, I could watch the
voltage on a voltmeter, with a needle, to see if it varies.

Not worth the effort, the voltage will vary, without much doubt. But
what you can learn from watching those variations is dubious. Whatever
caused that drive to fail has long since passed by.

Yousuf Khan

On Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:49:19 -0400, mm put
finger to keyboard and composed:

I just talked to my friend who gave me the Dell computer, and he said
that his repair guy told him the reason his harddrive failed may
(likely?) have been a surge or something coming from the power supply.

Is this a cause of harddrive failure?

A common cause?

Yes, it is a very common cause, especially in external enclosures
where people apply a 19V - 20V laptop power adapter in place of the
original 12V supply.

In most cases there is an easy no-cost DIY fix. It involves using a
pair of flush cutters to remove a shorted TVS (transient voltage
suppression) diode.

These articles should help you identify the various components:

HDD from inside Main parts:
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_from_inside.html

WD Pc easy Faultdiagnostic troubleshooting must try it ...
http://forum.hddguru.com/easy-faultd...ry-t12319.html

My notes may also help:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/HDD_ICs.txt
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/TVS_diodes.txt

If you upload a detailed photo of the component side of the drive's
PCB, maybe I could help you locate the faulty component. That said, if
the drive spins up, then the PCB is probably OK. The fault will
instead be inside the HDA.

If you wish to replace the TVS diode, then you can use an SMBJ12A in
place of the 12V diode, and an SMAJ5.0A in place of the 5V diode. Both
parts are available from Farnell, Mouser, Digikey.

Be aware that early model drives are not protected by TVS diodes.
Also, when such a diode is present, there will sometimes be a fuse
(Samsung), or zero-ohm resistor (WD), or inductor (Seagate), or
polyswitch (Hitachi) in series with the supply. These often go
open-circuit and will need to be bridged with a short piece of wire.
Alternatively, you could use a 2A smt fuse:

Littelfuse Surface Mount Fuses, N = 2A, S = 4A:
http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/48294.pdf

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

On Sat, 28 Aug 2010 22:40:18 -0400, mm put
finger to keyboard and composed:

So, if I could get an identical drive, I could replace the circuit
board myself??? I have 40 years part-time experience in electronic
repairs including soldering.

In modern drives, you will need to transplant the 8-pin serial EEPROM
chip, or its contents, from patient to donor. This chip stores unique,
drive specific calibration data. Identical drives manufactured in the
same factory on the same day will have different ROM contents. In
particular, there are "adaptive" data for each head.

The following article explains why drives have adaptive data.

HDD from inside: Tracks and Zones. How hard it can be?
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html

Essentially the reason is that no two heads are physically identical.
HD manufacturers try to fit as much data as possible onto each
platter. To do this, they take advantage of any head that performs
better than the average.

For example, some heads will have a better frequency response than
others, which means that you can cram more bits on each track. This
technique is called Variable Bits Per Inch (VBPI).

Giant magnetorestive (GMR) heads use a separate element for writing
and another for reading. The separation between these two components
varies from head to head. Once again manufacturers optimise data
density by implementing Variable Tracks Per Inch (VTPI).

Each HD therefore needs to be calibrated to account for VBPI and VTPI,
otherwise the drive doesn't know where to find the tracks, or the data
within the track. When a drive powers up, it needs to retrieve the
bulk of its firmware from a reserved area (System Area) on the
platters. If it can't read these data, then it clicks. This is what
usually happens after you swap a board without transferring the
calibration information.

That said, you may be lucky, and the tolerances between patient and
donor may be close enough to allow you to access your data without a
ROM transfer.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

On 8/28/2010 11:03 PM PT, Rod Speed typed:

I just talked to my friend who gave me the Dell computer, and he said
that his repair guy told him the reason his harddrive failed may (likely?)
have been a surge or something coming from the power supply.

Is this a cause of harddrive failure?

Yes, it can happen.

A common cause?

Nope.

It has happened to me back in summer of 2005 with an old ASUS A7V333
motherboard/mobo. (lock ups and no more boot ups) and Quantum Fireball
Plus 30 GB IDE HDD (circuit controller died). They were damaged by a
recent PSU melt down. The mobo's circuit board had brown/orange coloring
on its circuit board, a horrible burning odor/smell, etc. The old HDD
also went dead too. I never bothered to recover that drive's datas
since I had a backup.
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In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 28/08/2010 9:51 PM, Arno wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf wrote:
On 28/08/2010 8:49 PM, mm wrote:
I just talked to my friend who gave me the Dell computer, and he said
that his repair guy told him the reason his harddrive failed may
(likely?) have been a surge or something coming from the power supply.

Is this a cause of harddrive failure?

That's possible, but a more likely cause is the exact opposite
situation, where there wasn't enough power coming through the power
supply at the right moment.

That would not kill a drive. All modern HDDs have voltage
sensors and will just shut down if given too low voltages.

Arno

I'm pretty certain a lack of power was what killed one of my old 500GB
drives a few years back. Up until that time, it was working perfectly,
there were no SMART errors, etc. Then one day, I added another hard
drive into the system, and this one just stopped functioning
simultaneously. The only plausible answer is that the PS wasn't putting
enough power out to run all of the drives at the same time.

Well, temprary failure is of course possible, but if will simply
refuse to work and stay undamaged. There are other explanations
for a drive dying when adding another. Basically mechanical damage,
the first spin-down after along time and it was not able to spin-up
for a long time, electrostatic damage, etc..

Arno
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In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage JD wrote:
Was a surge protector used for this computer?

If not, the user was a fool. Electric supplies are
always oscillating up and down and
need taming by the surge protector.

That is BS. First, a surge protector would not help here at all.
Second, changes in AC frequency are harmless for most equipment
including computers. You clock may be off by a bit. But at
least in Europe these variances are tiny.

What a surge protector is for is to catch severe overvoltage
spikes induced by ligthening stikes close to or into above
ground mains lines. These go into the 1000V range
and can not only kill PSUs, they can also induce overvoltage
on the low-volt side in badly designed PSUs. It is the task
of the surge protector to limit the voltge to something
like 400V (235V AV) or 200V (115V AC), which a PSU can
usualy withstand for some miliseconds (at least if reasonable
quality).

Note that above-ground mains lines are a sign of an
underdeveloped or very old grid and are not in use anymore
in modern installations. With below ground mains, the
surge risk is very, very small.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email:
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