Uh-oh. You have a deadline to meet and suddenly your hard drive won’t power up for you. You’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that there is no power going to it. But why is that and can you fix it? Let’s take a closer look at the main reasons why your hard drive won’t power up.
Burnt Motor Controller Chip On PCB
As nasty as this may sound, it’s a pretty common occurrence. Typically, when you take an unknown power adapter and connect it to your hard drive it could go pfffft! That’s because higher voltage from the power adapter will instantly burn the motor controller chip and you will end up with a bricked disk. The best example of this would be connecting a 19v power adapter to a 9v hard drive. You’ll also find a burn mark on the chip to clue you in. The best way to avoid this is to have a power adapter that is native to the enclosure. Another way this can happen is through a power surge. You can avoid this with a good quality UPS system which will provide damage protection to your electronics and help you to save your data should the lights go out.
Stuck Spindle/Seized Motor
Well, this is sort of a good news/bad news scenario. There are times when your hard drive will receive power even when you think it isn’t. What you may be experiencing is a stuck spindle or a seized motor. Both of these will make you think there is no power being received, but there is. This is also one of those fixes that are far from DIY as you will require specialized tools in order to release the spindle if that is the problem. There is a warning that should be included here and that is not to open the casing yourself and attempt to free the spindle with a screwdriver. Regardless of how careful you think you will be, you stand a good chance at damaging the platters and this could result in a bricked disk that contains data you won’t be able to recover.
So, Why Not Swap The PCB From A Donor Drive?
Yeah, we hear that advice a lot. But as it turns out, it is somewhat more complicated than that. Sure, we are not saying that it won’t work because there is a possibility that it will. Well, that was back when the Maxtor family of hard drives existed and there were some models that could be easily swapped out and worked just fine. In today’s world of new technology, that doesn’t work. That’s because there are so many hard drive manufacturers in the industry that too many factors come into play making the location of an appropriate donor board a difficult and time-consuming task.
Here’s what can happen.
You locate a board that is similar to what you are trying to replace or repair. You happen to be lucky enough to find one that matches the model and number of the damaged machine. So you swap it out and well, the hard drive won’t work. Plus, the swap you just completed may actually cause more damage as a result. This is why we highly discourage such a DIY attempt.
The Solution
Typically, when you have a stuck spindle or seized motor your wisest solution is a new hard drive. If that is not the option you have hoped for, you can still visit a data recovery specialist to assist with saving the data on the hard drive and to release the spindle. Remember, you have to do some homework on selecting a data recovery lab. That’s because there are so many that are not reputable and are – for a lack of a better term – scammers. Find out how to figure out the good ones from the bad ones here: 3 Most Common Data Recovery Scams .
We can help!
If you happen to have a hard drive that is not powering or spinning up, we can help repair and recover your data. Just send us a message through our Contact Form. Please be sure to give us as much detail as possible about the initial failure circumstances.