What's that smell ?

[Elixer]

Odd one, had a machine sitting around for about 1 year with no use, tonight, when I went to turn it on, this occurred.

The caddy the HD was in has the rubber spacers on it, so, no metal was touching anyplace.

Now, how on earth could this happen ?


For what it is worth, it was a Seagate 7200.10

 

[evident]

is that a memory chip? cant make out the readings on it.

 

[Rvenger]

You burned up the SMOOTH chip which is responsible for spinning up the HDD. I would be questioning the Power Supply first. Check for bad caps.

http://www.delhidatarecovery.com/seagate_hard_drive_problems.html

PCBA Damage

Hard drives in general are very vulnerable to overheating, power spikes and surges. Bad power supply unit combined with power streak is usually enough to burn spindle motor controller driver (SMOOTH chip) on the logic board. If this occurs the computer would reboot itself or shutdown completely, you would normally notice acrid smell and when powered on the drive would not spin up at all.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It was time. RIP, little black chip thing.

 

[Elixer]

You burned up the SMOOTH chip which is responsible for spinning up the HDD. I would be questioning the Power Supply first. Check for bad caps.

http://www.delhidatarecovery.com/seagate_hard_drive_problems.html

Huh, interesting.
The PSU on that machine is a seasonic 650w, checking the rails on that one, everything checks out fine under load.

I wonder if the surface mount CAPS on the HD could have gone bad ?
Data code for the drive is 08241, and it turns out, that translates to 2007-12-14 if http://www.bugaco.com/calculators/seagate_date_code.php is correct.

 

[corkyg]

While the focus of the photo is not great, it does seem like the item circled in red is popped up higher than the rest of them.

 

[Elixer]

Looking at my supply of dead 7200.10 drives, I happen to come across the same circuit board & firmware version (3AAK). I transplanted the circuit board, and the above drive now works.
Out of the 5 dead 7200.10s, 3 have completely different circuit boards from one another.

I also tried a circuit board that was same version, but, different firmware version (3AAE), and that was NOT able to read the drive, but it did spin it up.

 

[Elixer]

BTW, this seems like it is common.

Notice the burn pattern on this one:
http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?t=16737&start=

Also saw some WD's SMOOTH chip also have a catastrophic failure as well.
http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-...oth-quot-chip-on-WD5001aals-drive/td-p/213764

 

[Rvenger]

Not so smooth anymore I guess

 

[C101]

Smooth on the package is in reference to the smoothdrive motor controller technology that ST uses in the power combo IC.

You can see a publicly available datasheet for a similar ST chip here: ST L7250

In my experience, these kinds of markings typically demonstrate the effects of a high current short to ground, where the bond wires got hot enough to damage the plastic. You can see that the damage goes from the center portion of the package, to two leads connected to thicker traces, with capacitors on them. These are likely to be +5V or +12V connections.