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Posts Tagged ‘seagate’

What is Hard Drive PCB?

The green board on the bottom of the hard disk drive is known as Printed Circuit Board(PCB). The main function of the PCB is to supply power to the hard drive, maintain speed and rotation of the spindle, and control all internal operations through its firmware. Essentially, PCB is the brains of the hard drive that all components are heavily dependent upon.

Why Swap PCB Boards?

Hard disk drives that do not spin up after the power has been supplied can be diagnosed as PCB failure. Because data recovery service is very expensive, sometimes we would prefer to swap them ourselves.

How to find the matching HDD PCB boards?
Western Digital – same board number which is etched on the PCB, begin with 2060- Seagate – same board number which is etched on the PCB, begin with 100…, and the same Main Controller IC. If you can’t find the number on the PCB (Old Models), you should find the same Main Controller IC. Maxtor- same Main Controller IC(The biggest chip on the board) Hitachi- same information on the small white label (first two lines) Samsung – same board number which is etched on the PCB, begin with BF41- Fujitsu – same board number which is etched on the PCB, begin with CA

Hard Drive PCB Swap Process:

Remove the PCB from both hard drives with star screwdriver. Replace the damaged PCB with replacement one. If you HDD spins up, but can’t be recognized, you should also exchange the BIOS chip on it. If there is no matching 8pins BIOS chip on the PCB, it means the BIOS chip is integrated on the Main Chip IC, then you should remove the damaged PCB’s Main Chip IC to the donor PCB. It is more complex to exchange the Main Chip IC than exchange the BIOS chip. If you should do, please do several test on the PCBs which don’t have the important data.

What is PCB’s BIOS Chip?

All of the 8pins (4 pins on each sides) with 25P05VP, 25P10VP, 25F512, 25F1024, 25F1024AN, SST25VF512, SST25VF010, etc. are the BIOS chip. It is easy to be found because there are not many 8pins chips on the board.

In most cases, you should exchange the BIOS before you swap hard disk pcb. You should have certain technique.

Note: You should know the hard drive failures are not always caused by PCB failure, swap PCB can’t guarantee to fix all of the hard drive problems.

Removable Storage industry has a high-speed development with rapid spread of network, digital, entertainment-oriented. External hard disk has become the largest and greatest potential market of the blue ocean on the field of IT.

External hard disk has been well known by consumer through the rapid expansion and popularity in the past decade. It have grown to 12 million in 2008 from 4 million in 2005, the average sales are 1 million every month, in just four years, an increase is more than 300%, which is the fastest-growing Computer Peripherals products. HDD market is expected in 2009 will be maintained in 2008 average according to market forecast although affected by the global financial crisis 2008.

According to IDC market research reports, the whole market of HDD is around of 12 million in 2008, of which DIY assembly is still dominant or monopolistic position, about 75% market share. The original brand which represented as Lenovo, Seagate, Yi Jie, Patriot only take up 25%. Therefore, regardless of the trend of the future growth of it, or to the original DIY evolving process, all of this provides the conditions for rapid growth of the original hard drive.

2009 external hard disk market share analysis, based on industry, business, markets, industrial chain and other details of the four major areas, with the DIY to the original evolving process, and original brands (such as Lenovo, Yi Jie, Seagate) is approximately 35% (that is 350,000 monthly) in 2009, assembly is about 65% (that is 650,000 monthly), in which general assembly is about 20%.

The next five years (2010-2014), external hard disk market will maintain steady growth to about 2.5 million per month in 2014, the growth compared to the same period last year is about 250%, period-on-perion growth is more than 20%, and it will break the DIY monopoly and the excessive proportion of the historical situation in 2014, the original hdd will occupy about 60%, the assembly is only 40%.

I recently had the chance to test one of the Acer Aspire EasyStore NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices.

The units come out of the box with either 4x 250GB hard drives (the 1TB version) or 4x 500GB (the 2TB version) all of the drives are Seagate drives making the unit that bit more quiet and reliable, they also stay cool with a rear 80mm fan which is inaudible throughout the use.

These in the past have always been a very expensive item that only business users could afford, but the new Acer Models are A LOT cheaper, and the first thing you notice as you get it out of the box is the style, its not just a black box to hide away in a cupboard, but it wouldn’t look out of place next to a new TV or a shiny new computer.

The model that I got to test was one of the 2TB models, more than enough storage for even the biggest downloader, the unit itself was very easy to set up with just being a power cable and network cable, you can even connect it to the network by the built in wireless adapter, so you don’t even need to set up a full home network.

I was expecting to have to install hundreds of drivers for before windows would even find it but I was mistaken and one quick program later and I could back up to the drive with the greatest of ease and showed up in “My Computer” as a network device – overall very easy to set up.

The user interface was very easy to use from any computer on the network through a web browser, making it perfect for storing films music and pictures, it even allows you to set up an FTP server so you can access the files from anywhere in the world!!

All in all this is a brilliant product for a sensible price when compared to other brands of Storage Devices and would go well in any home network with no hassle, I would definitely recommend this to anyone that was looking for an external drive for home, well worth every penny.

During the recent CES in Las Vegas we had the opportunity to learn directly from Seagate as the new discs DAVE (depth: Seagate DAVE, a web server in your pocket) is about to be marketed, although in combination with other equipment as an accessory. To summarize briefly, DAVE is a technology applied to the external disk pocket that allows the disc to communicate through wireless Wi-Fi and Bluetooth compatible with equipment of course.

According Clubic, the first partner to provide DAVE accessory compact camcorder will be the Sanyo VPC-HD1000, natively equipped only with SDHC slot, whose capacity is tied to that of the memory card in the possession of the user. By DAVE in your pocket, thanks to support from the camcorder wireless connections, so the user can rely on an amount of memory that can reach up to 60GB.

There is no information concerning the price of DAVE as an accessory, although Seagate staff at the CES in Las Vegas we have provided an indicative figure of around 200.00 Euro. A price not lower, but in any case honest if compared with the convenience of having a backpack a storage system that can wirelessly connect to multiple terminals simultaneously, such as mobile phones, cameras and camcorders.