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A little DIY hard drive unbricking

Subject: Storage | July 30, 2012 - 01:31 PM |
Tagged: Seagate, repair, DIY, bricked

While this trick will not work on all bricked HDDs, if you have a Seagate 7200.11 HDD that is failing because it is convinced it is always in a busy state then you should check out this story on Hack a Day.  While the initial step of detaching the circuit board and blocking some connections with piece of cardstock can be handled with easy, it will take some expertise to use an Arduino or serial-TTL converter to issue commands to the HDD controller.  It is a good thing that there is a tutorial to walk you through the steps to unbrick your HDD, besides in the worst case scenario your HDD will still be a brick so it is worth a shot.

HaD_seagate-firmware-bug-repair.jpg

"Hard drive firmware is about the last place you want to find a bug. But that turned out to be the problem with the Seagate HDD which he was using in a RAID array. It stopped working completely, and he later found out the firmware has a bug that makes the drive think it’s permanently in a busy state. There’s a firmware upgrade available, but you have to apply it before the problem shows its face, otherwise you’re out of luck. Some searching led him to a hardware fix for the problem."

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

Source: Hack a Day

Swap your displays CCFL with LEDs

Subject: Displays | May 31, 2011 - 12:09 PM |
Tagged: hack, mod, ccfl, led, repair

Over at Hack a Day is a video and project log of an industrious fellow whose digital picture frame backlight bit the biscuit.  Instead of buying a new one he removed the dead CCFL and replaced it with a six dollar LED strip instead of an expensive inverter or lamp for the CCFL.  The project is not easy, especially if you wish to attempt this on a full sized monitor but there are tips and tricks that should help you on your way in the full post.

CCFL_repair.png

"[Fileark] had the backlight on his digital picture frame go out one day. These are generally Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps which require an inverter to source the voltage necessary for proper operation. When they stop working, the inverter is usually to blame. Since that circuit is made up of pretty small surface mount circuitry, he decided to replace the backlight with LEDs rather than repair the inverter."

Here are some more Display articles from around the web:

Displays

Source: Hack a Day

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