Recovery Force® Data Recovery Forum

What do you measure at R519 (near the coil)?
R519 from molex ground is 108.2 ohms
Marking is 2000

What about R222 / R223 / R224 (near U200)?
R222 from molex ground is N/A
R223 from molex ground is N/A
R224 from molex ground is N/A
Markings are 2000

What about the 1R00 resistors near Q501?
1R00 resistors from molex ground are 8.6 ohms

Is there anything under your "Ground" label?

I meant for you to measure the resistance between the ends of the resistor. For example, the 1R00 resistor should measure 1.0 ohms.

What do you measure at R519 (near the coil)?
R519 is 114.0 ohms

What about R222 / R223 / R224 (near U200)?
R222 is 199.7 ohms
R223 is 199.3 ohms
R224 is 199.6 ohms

What about the 1R00 resistors near Q501?
1R00 are 0.4 ohms

Your readings appear to be real. It's surprising because SMOOTH motor controllers tend to go bang when overvolted, like the ones on these WD PCBs:

https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=1119

I would test the preamp by measuring the resistances between Ground and each of +5V and -5V supplies at the HDA connector (pins 4,5,6).

https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?p=138#p138

That reminded me of a case where an end user reached out about having his drive at a local computer shop who said that they offer data recovery. He said that the shop tried the freezer, but needed to leave it in for at least 24 hours because it hadn't yet started to work. We said to pick it up and get it to us ASAP.

We removed the board, saw the huge hole in the smooth controller chip, setup a donor PCB, imaged the drive and gave him his data back within a few hours.

When they go, it is usually very obvious, though there have been a few cases where they do manage to die without a huge burn hole through the top.

I think you mean these pins, so using 4 as ground I get no readings off 5 and 6 at all.

I'm not sure whether the pinout is the same, or maybe there's an error in my HDD Oracle article.

Can you show us a photo of the underside of the PCB?

So a working PCB would probably be the easy way to get this drive working again?

Or I could just mail it to Recovery Force for spare parts?

The pinout looks similar, so your preamp would appear to be OK. At least it's not shorted.