Seagate ST38410A 8.4GB IDE Hard Drive, please?

[prowler]

Hi everyone,

I wonder if anyone here might have an old but fully working Seagate ST38410A 8.4GB hard drive and would be willing to sell it to me, please?

I have one of these hard drives in an old Pentium 200MMX PC which I use as an emulation workstation and it died on me - completely without warning - on Friday evening while I was using the machine for something else.

The first I knew of it was when Windows blue-screened with the message "Cannot write to hard drive - Disk is inaccessible." when I tried to save a file I had been editing. When I rebooted the machine, which had then frozen, I got the dreaded "Primary Hard Drive Fail" message after the POST.

And now the drive is completely dead when power is applied.

A similar Fujitsu HDD I have fitted in its place is working perfectly, so everything else is working okay.

There's a fair possibility that the crash was caused by the failure of a component in the drive electronics and, if this is so, then a pcb from another drive would enable the drive to be salvaged, saving me the hassle of rebuilding the triple-booting system it contains on three primary partitions and an extended partition.

The failed drive was manufactured in January 2003. If, by any chance, anyone still has one and would sell it to me, or can suggest where else I might obtain one, then I would be extremely grateful.

Thankyou.

[roy bates]

theres loads on ebay.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Seagate-ST...item460ecb9d11


im not sure you can actually switch the controller boards.theres multiple reasons for that.
the drive might even have mechanical issues,stuck heads,dead drive motor etc.

good luck.

[thomas]

If it died in the middle of work without special noise then the mechanics should be ok.

If the PCB can be removed without cutting wires or something, then it should work. I once transplanted the PCB of a 320gig WD drive like this and it was a great success.

[Z3k]

Still have a box full of dead hard-disks pcbs, post a picture of your dead one and i'll have a look.

[fitzsteve]

I have a 40gb version of this drive, not sure if the PCB or drive would be any use to you?

[prowler]

Thanks for all your replies, guys!

I think I'll try eBay first:

Originally Posted by roy bates

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Seagate-ST...item460ecb9d11

I've bought from that seller a few times and the drive featured there is exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks for the link, Roy!

I'll update this thread with my progress. The drive is fitted with a rubber protective sleeve which I must remove to get to the pcb. Then I'll be able to tell whether it can be removed without cutting wires, etc., though I'll be surprised if it can't.

Edit: Just bought it! Estimated delivery is between 31st May and 4th June.

[roy bates]

good luck prowler,most of the drives ive seen have connectors to the controller via one or two ribbons that have a very tiny lock for the motor and heads(some dont so it might be prudent to have a close look first) a bit like the one on the 1200 keyboard connector so youll have to be very carefull when you lift the pcb out after you unscrew it.
although i have seen some that have no connectors for the motor and heads and its just a press fit to the back of the drive pcb.

theres nothing worse than a drive failure,so i feel your pain

[prowler]

Thanks for the tips, Roy!

The drives I've repaired before this have been much older, half-height units having ribbons protruding from the drive mechanism and fitted with DIL connectors matching up with headers on the pcb, so everything was quite simple.

Even if my drive is dead, it won't have been a waste of money to buy the replacement drive. The Fujitsu drive I've replaced it with was the only spare drive of that size I had which was empty!

[roy bates]

well,keep us informed as to how you got on.i do beleive it might be fixable and with that said, your half way there

[prowler]

The hard drive was delivered today!

[Thorham]

Tell us how it went, and hope it works

[prowler]

So do I, but it has been a very dull day here today and probably will be again tomorrow, and I am going to need some good daylight to carry out such an intricate task.

Don't worry, I'll post a full report here - with pics too if I think they'll help - to let you all know how it went!

[fitzsteve]

Good luck

[prowler]

Thanks, Steve!

I'm a bit nervous about this job, tbh. I'm worried that I could end up with two scrap drives if I'm not very, very careful.

[roy bates]

i suggest trying to take the controller off the broken drive first to see how it comes off,then the nerve racking part is almost over(and you wont feel so bad about taking it off).it should be plain sailing after that.
just be carefull when it comes to the heads and drive motor cables(if it has fly leads)

this way if you muck up(dont worry you wont) then its just a case of repeating the process on the working one and replacing the controller.

[prowler]

Thanks again for your tips, Roy! I appreciate your support.

I'm hoping to find time to get this done tomorrow...

I'll take photos where necessary, but my picture editing setup is on the hard drive I'm trying to recover! I'll retro-fit them into my report sometime later, if that's successful.

[roy bates]

did you get anywhere with this prowler?

[prowler]

An avalanche of work is preventing me from even making a start on this.

[prowler]

Today I finally managed to find the time to test the hard drive I recently acquired from eBay and, as expected, it's a good one!

Tomorrow I'll start stripping the old one...

[fitzsteve]

<--- Sending good thoughts your way