Hi all,
Firstly thanks for all the info and the best wishes, those photo's are truly priceless. I appreciate all your comments
I did some thinking and more testing last night. Perhaps it's not the spindle motor after all. The guy at the shop was less than helpful so I plugged the power back into the drive last night and played CSI.
Results:
No Smoke
The circuit board on the back of the drive in one particular region (top left with the spindle motor furthest away from you about 1 square inch) was slowly getting hotter. Therefore we have a localised short circuit.
The spindle motor itself was cold and not spinning at all. The rest of the drive was cold.
So here is my new thinking(remember I am better at fixing V8 motors than 7200rpm hard drives) the circuit board has shorted out and the smoke was caused by heat and burning plastice/chips or something.
Other thought if the smoke came from within a sealed case where the platters are how could it come out. The case is sealed air tight....aaaahhhh so the smoke had to come from outside the case...... light dawns on backpackers mind.
Solution?
Remove the circuit board and install a new one same model. Can this be done? Any pitfalls? It seems to be on the outside of the case with independant screws therefore no need to crack the case.
Then multimeter test the power supply to check it is not the problem sending a surge through.
Once again thanks for all you help, beers all round if we fix this one!
Matt
Firstly thanks for all the info and the best wishes, those photo's are truly priceless. I appreciate all your comments
I did some thinking and more testing last night. Perhaps it's not the spindle motor after all. The guy at the shop was less than helpful so I plugged the power back into the drive last night and played CSI.
Results:
No Smoke
The circuit board on the back of the drive in one particular region (top left with the spindle motor furthest away from you about 1 square inch) was slowly getting hotter. Therefore we have a localised short circuit.
The spindle motor itself was cold and not spinning at all. The rest of the drive was cold.
So here is my new thinking(remember I am better at fixing V8 motors than 7200rpm hard drives) the circuit board has shorted out and the smoke was caused by heat and burning plastice/chips or something.
Other thought if the smoke came from within a sealed case where the platters are how could it come out. The case is sealed air tight....aaaahhhh so the smoke had to come from outside the case...... light dawns on backpackers mind.
Solution?
Remove the circuit board and install a new one same model. Can this be done? Any pitfalls? It seems to be on the outside of the case with independant screws therefore no need to crack the case.
Then multimeter test the power supply to check it is not the problem sending a surge through.
Once again thanks for all you help, beers all round if we fix this one!
Matt