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Morning all – HAPPY FRIDAY!!
They go shorted, sometimes smoke and burn but they are there to protect your valuable DATA.
Nearly all hard drives are fitted with overvoltage protection TVS diodes.
Why?
When your PC power supply goes bad, there’s potential for the +5 or +12v lines to go high which can damage the hard drive controller board in an instant.
Same occurs with external hard drives that require an external power pack for power. Sometimes these typically 12v adaptors are lost and replaced with the next convenient power supply along which may be a 19V charger for a laptop. Not good.
The TVS diodes are voltage clamping devices that connect directly to the voltage in pins of the hard drive via a fusible link or fuse. When the voltage connected to a power supply exceeds a threshold, the diode switches on and either blows the fuse or limits the power supply voltage.
At 555 Data Recovery Co, we are often presented with a drive having symptoms of no power after a storm, faulty PC power supply or wrong adaptor connected to an external storage device. A recent drive presented to us was a WD 1600AAJS 3.5 inch HDD which has suffered an over-voltage event. We were able to bypass the fault, and recover 100% of the clients valuable data. 80% of cases we presented with are recoverable with thanks to these diodes.
Sometimes the diodes are burnt out and just need replacing to allow access to data.
If you are experiencing a dead drive, burnt or smells burnt, don’t keep using it, bring it us at 555 Data Recovery for assesment.
See you all next week – Have a FAB weekend!
