How I repaired a ST2000DM001 Seagate 2TB HDD & how it died. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / repair

author: ESXi
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2019, 07:26:11 pm
content: Recently doing more and more electronic repairs, just for fun and to help out people.I hate it when electronics can be repaired and people don't know about it and toss it out.. That's just more and more e-waste on the big pile getting bigger each day.So my friend send me a message, his Seagate disk failed suddenly. Alright let me check it out and see if I can repair it (note: I DON'T have a clean room or clean hood laminar flow workstation. So opening the disk was not a option I also have no microscope to check out the head nor did I have a doner drive at this point).I was hoping it was some fault on the controller pcb. After I got the disk, I first tested it and it did absolutely nothing, this can either be good or bad news, let's find out.Had a 20pin ATX supermicro power supply laying around, this was just was I needed. I placed a jumper in the PSU on PS-ON to GND to jumpstart the PSU. The PSU was connected to a power outlet strip with power switch, this was turned off at this stage. The PCB was off the hdd and connected up to the power supply. The PCB was taken off the disk to take measurements with my multi meter, everything was ready so I turned on my multi meter and turned on the power outlet strip and the power supply turned on.The SATA power connector had two power rails running in to it. A+ to GND should measure 12vdc and B+ to GND should be 5vdc. But weird enough the power supply's short circuit protection (SCP) kicked in, we have a short on the board.. Obviously the first thing you do is always visually inspect the PCB for exploded or burnt components, but in my case there weren't any. After trying again I noticed that a diode was getting a bit hot, hmm It might have shorted because of too much voltage went in the controller.. I tried it again and this time I sprayed some freeze spray on the board and turn on the power supply to quickly see what gets hot. It was still the diode, so I replaced it with another one and now still nothing happens nothing gets hot. Nothing at all. Probably some IC is blown up..I ordered a fresh and "new" (actually used but whatever fine for recovery) board from AliExpress, it got in the mail yesterday and soldered over the eeprom to the new doner board. Make sure you get the exact same model and revision board andDO NOTturn on the drive with the doner eeprom on it because it can do harm to the disk. After soldering over the eeprom the drive was spinning up and working correctly. I was able to mount it and read the S.M.A.R.T data, the drive was in "perfect" mechanical state. Time to back it up and I brought it back to my friend. When he was connecting the disk to his host I noticed that he was using a really REALLY cheap USB to SATA converter with cheap af wall adapter. The wall adapter said on the sticker output 12v, 2a. Sounds fine to me! But guess what, this junk Wish garbage was what killed the controller. After a few minutes the drive started to act up weird. I knew it, disconnect the disk fast and throw that stuff in the garbage. I asked him before using it if this was the crap he used to connect the drive to his pc before it failed and he told me no it was another converter. So we tried that one and it was even worse, I was not surprised at all.. Drive still works but we quickly disconnected it.SO, when connecting up your drive to your pc using a converter make sure it is decent quality because these garbage knockoff sata usb adapters and wall adapters will really send 12v to the 5v rail and burn your controller to hell. Or the wall adapter will have so much ripple that it will also go like crazy and harm the disk.

author: _Wim_
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2019, 08:42:15 pm
content: Nice write-up! Good tip about the Eeprom.The low cost stuff seems to get worse and worse. If it does not kill your gear, it sends sufficient RF to disturb radio reception and mess up accurate measurements.

author: fzabkar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2019, 08:57:18 pm
content: I have compiled many resources at the HDD Oracle.TVS Diode FAQ:www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=86Tutorial - Linear and Switchmode Regulators used in HDDs:http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=231Datasheets:http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=1577http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=94Resources for HDD and SSD electronic repair:www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2599

author: ESXi
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2019, 12:25:18 am
content: Quote from: fzabkar on October 27, 2019, 08:57:18 pmThanks for the resources. I bridged one bad zero-ohm resistor a/k/a fuse after the diode replacement, the controller was still fried. Like I said some IC was just blown out by 12volts is my guess, and since I don't have a reflow workstation and spare chips the easiest way for me was to just replace the bad board and put the original eeprom back on it.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2019, 12:11:44 pm
content: You're lucky, Seagates usually die in a less obvious and more difficult to recover manner.

author: ESXi
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2019, 03:20:01 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on October 28, 2019, 12:11:44 pmYep. I told my friend that he was a really lucky bastard haha. I hope he throws away this Wish garbage and buys a decent enclosure of adapter for a bit more money from a decent brand instead or a generic no name brand from Wish.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2019, 04:09:37 pm
content: I've repaired a couple of hard drives though none recently. When I was a broke teen someone gave me a pair of dead Conner 1GB IDE drives back when that was a big drive. I tried swapping the boards between the two and ended up with one working drive that I used for several years.Then about 10 years ago a friend of a friend offered me $50 to repair a 18GB SCSI drive which apparently contained his music and porn collections. That one had gotten a drink spilled on it while it was on, I found one of the mosfets driving the spindle motor had shorted and burned up. Replaced that and it came back to life.Haven't messed with trying to repair any more dead ones since then, drives got really cheap.

author: ESXi
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2019, 01:46:52 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on October 28, 2019, 04:09:37 pmSounds fun to me. If you succeed in a repair.Quote from: james_s on October 28, 2019, 04:09:37 pmThat's funny. I've worked for a small IT repair company and I have moved files over from old worn drives with dead or infected operating system so many times and sometimes I indeed also found a porn collection (a rather big one). Like yeah hmm why is it transferring so slow and all the big mp4 files. Let me check what's up, ow well. Never mindBut ey, that's part of the job lol. But that's like almost 8 years ago by now. My rule of thumb now is to not look at anything in detail just transfer it all and call it a day. because sometimes thing can be shocking.Quote from: james_s on October 28, 2019, 04:09:37 pmYep, drives are cheap now, but when it comes to recovery for whatever reason it might end up being a expensive repair (for example head or platter swap) or another way of recovery.