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I think I know the ultimate answer, but I'd like to know the cause.

I have an old, custom-enclosure Maxtor OneTouch 4 750gb, which contains a Seagate Barracuda 7200 internal hard drive. I tried to use it recently to recover some old, not-vital-but-would-like-anyway files but noted that when connecting it to the power, the LED would blink either very rapidly, or quite rapidly and there was no noise coming from drive inside.

"May be an issue with the enclosure power source", I thought. So I took the enclosure apart and removed the drive, before then connecting it to a Rshtech 3.5" SATA III enclosure and connecting that the power. Nothing. So I tried another drive I knew to be working to make sure it wasn't the enclosure...but that drive connected perfectly.

So my question is, as a relative noob, given that the drive will not power up, there must be a problem somewhere. Is it with the SATA connector circuit board (apologies if I don't use the correct terminology) and is it possible to try and replace this - assuming it's the cause of the problem - or is basically the drive knackered. Is it possible to steal this board from another drive and swap, though I don't seem to have any others that exactly match and I assume it's not a one size fits all?

Your suggestions would be most welcome. I have a picture of the drive but I cannot post one until I reach a certain profile level 🙄

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It is possible to swap the board from one drive to another, provided they are the same/compatible PCB boards. You may have to swap a BIOS chip which would contain information specific to your drive.

If the problem is with the drive mechanism, you won't have success just swapping the board however.

Depending on your proficiency with electronics and soldering, you may find that you can diagnose the fault a bit, and possibly test and recover some common faults.

Removing the circuit board should be ok. Take some antistatic precautions or you risk damaging the board further. You might inspect the board visually for damage to the circuitry. You might see tarnish, dirt, water damage, or parts that look like they were damaged by heat. You can clean away some types of tarnish/oxidation if it is visible.

You should be able to test resistance on diodes that act as a circuit breaker to protect the rest of the drive from power surges. If you have a multimeter you can test them to see if they have the proper resistance. Failed ones can be either removed or replaced with 'donor' diodes. If you go this route, you could then install the original board and retest. If you don't replace a removed diode, be aware that you will no longer be protected from power problems.

If you do have to use a full donor board, on some models it will require that you swap the bios chip as I mentioned, that holds specific information about your drive.

You can Google for more details on "seagate barracuda diode" and "seagate barracuda pcb swap".

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  • Thanks very much. That is probably outside of my skillset, and perhaps it might be best taking it to a professional who can try this instead. I would like to preserve the data if I can, and I don't want to mistakenly destroy it if there's someone who can give it a try. Very useful advice though, and thank you for your time!
    – Dan
    Commented Jan 7, 2021 at 18:01

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