Hard drive logic board... bear with me!

DanSolo wrote:
> On Feb 22, 12:39 pm, DanSolo <daniel.oto....RemoveThis@ucd.ie> wrote:
>> I'm trying to replace a logic board on a Maxtor Fireball 3 40gb
>> 3.5inch. How exact does the replacement have to be? As long as it has
>> the serial 2F040L0, like the one I have, am I OK? There seems to be a
>> lot of drives and logic boards with this serial on ebay, but the
>> markings on the drive seems ever so slightly different (only in the
>> locations of the numbers and barcodes are changed though)
>> Thanks!
>
> Well I got an indentical (except it's 20gb) drive. Works fine in the
> PC. Swapped boards and neither will work. This is bad I guess as it
> means both the board and the motor/heads/etc are mangled. Nothing for
> it now except try to crack them open and swap the platter I guess.
> Wish me luck boys, I'm going in.

Will you be wearing the bunny suit like this guy ?
Looking cool, is important when working on the platters.

http://services.seagate.com/facilities.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom

Paul
 >> Stay informed about: Hard drive logic board... bear with me! 

>Well I got an indentical (except it's 20gb) drive. Works fine in the
>PC. Swapped boards and neither will work.

Because they're not identical. It's not a case of 'almost identenical' or
'pretty close', you need an *exact* match to the make, model, capacity,
revision, etc of the drive for it to work.

>This is bad I guess as it
>means both the board and the motor/heads/etc are mangled. Nothing for
>it now except try to crack them open and swap the platter I guess.
>Wish me luck boys, I'm going in.

I hate to sound pesamistic, but all you're likely to do is destroy both
drives entirely in the process. For starters you require a cleanroom
environment to even open a drive (the space between the heads and the
platters is in the range of hundredths if not thousanths of a millimeter, so
a single spec of dust can cause irreppairable damage).

Even if you had the right facilities, you would still only be able to swap
platters with an identical model - but that's a moot point because if
everything was identical you could swap the boards anyway.

Chris
 >> Stay informed about: Hard drive logic board... bear with me!