Last year i found external HDD from scrapbox in electronics shop which had 4tb seagate drive inside it didn't work all blocks were bad, i took it out of housing, checked serial number it was like three years passed warranty. I Wrote a letter to seagate asking what could i do with it, they said that Even though warranty ended, they are willing to give me new one, just send them broken one. Sent it to seagate netherlands ,shipping cot me 5 euros, and in one week they shipped me new 4Tb hdd back. Lol basically free.
why would you buy a broken drive and then ask the company what to do with it to begin with? you received it faulty. what any other company would have done is tell you to recycle it but a technical person would have salvaged the magnets & platters. you got lucky
The local scrap man has been generous enough to give me broken electronics. I've been repairing a lot of it and sharing the loot with him. I've also been practicing my solder and reflow work on them. I'm not as quick or as good as you but I can definitely feel a lot of improvement. Donor boards are excellent if you can get them folks, and the bonus is you get free chips to play with if you're into building electronics.
I'm impressed. This is the first time that I've caught up with your channel. A few months back my grand-daughter also had a faulty portable Seagate 2TB drive that happened to stop working while it was plugged into the USB port of an HP Laptop which interestingly also died at the same time. I'm an old school technician when I started out in the business all radios and TVs had tubes. So, I was reluctant to tackle the HDD myself, I rang a few repair shops in Australia (where I live) and was quoted from 900-1500 (A$) to retrieve the data. I guessed that the Laptop must have put a lot than five volts out of it's USB port to the HDD. Poor laptop design? Luckily for me the Seagate HDD was still in warranty and without hesitation Seagate transported it from Australia to the Netherlands and back for free, great service! So my grand-daughter was able to get back her valuable data and a free new HDD to boot. Keep the videos coming.😀
I watched a lot of repair learning videos, in various fields, but I do not feel the joy of knowing until I see your method of analyzing and solving faults. many thanks to give to you sir 👍
Alex, we are on the road to 300k. Please save something very hard to fix for this anniversary. We need the biggest "lets plug it in ---- and it works!" smile that we have ever witnessed.
Watched many of your videos and used to live in Northridge for a few years in the early 2000s. You make fixing them look so easy. Have a couple of hard drives with the same issues. So now I can see if I can try to fix them.
I had to restrain myself to jump-for-joy Alex, when you fixed the HDD and were able to see the drive and all its files on the screen. One of my big fears center around the loss of data from external back-up HDDs. I always thought that 'Data-Recovery' had to do with complicated dis-assembly and analysis of the disks, so I learned something new again today and now I'm not so anxious about my external HDDs breaking down. This video has contributed to my 'Stress-Reduction'. Who would have thought...lol 🙏👍😄
new subscriber, retired electronics tech, nice job! amazing little books with parts, far cry from tubes, transistors, surface mounted devices too cool! was use too the big stuff, lol! nice soldering tweezers!!!
I like your videos and this channel. Also appreciate the willingness to share with the world your way how you repair. Good job and keep it up! I have to make a warning at the beginning of the video. The method how you measured the fuses on board. Especially when you measure the second pair of fuses. If one is bad from those two, you dmm will show they are good. Take care with that checking method where two or more fuses are in parallel.
Always learning something new and as I near retirement, want to get back into electronics and have to check out your site. Thanks for another great vid
i am an IT guy who wants to know more about electronics, ive been watching your videos almost daily, my target is to know everything about computers and electronics
Good job with this fix. A failing hard drive is one of my fears because that's where I store all my data. I do have an external hard drive for back ups but still it was great to see an HDD gets saved. I'm starting to get hooked on all your videos. I might probably learn a thing or two from these fixes.
You've probably talked about it in other videos, but what hot tweezers do you use? I think maybe I've heard you say it was a Weller station, but I can't find one that is still being manufactured... I'm having a heck of a time finding a decent quality replacement. Would love to just buy a JBC but I don't have that kind of money 🤑 I would take suggestions from the community too
its great ur happy face after each succesfully repair! u re a good guy! Best Wishes from Argentina, and Thanks u for share you knowledge! Really Thanks!
Hey Alex, I have a question. Since the traces on both those 0ohm resistors were shared, could it have worked to just take one from the left side and solder it onto one of the pairs on the right? I'm guessing not, but curious as to why they exist like that to begin with.
They are sometimes used as a fuse, 0-ohm resistors are not truly 0 ohms, they still provide some resistance where if their power limit for their size package is greatly exceeded, they will blow
Zachary - Thank you for that. I was just about to research the purpose of zero ohm resistors since at zero ohms of resistance they shouldn't even be called resistors.
No no no, that is NOT flux. That is the gunk from the cooking diode condensing on the PCB. It is VERY classic to see this from diodes and other semiconductors when they go boom. I repeat: IT WAS NOT WORKED ON!
I love your house hunting series Alex, hope you'll find one that suits your needs. I am also a big fan of your repair works, all are amazing, i've been looking forward to your new uploads! I am also starting a repair shop business at home, and hope someday to have a great shop like yours😊 Goodluck and Godbless!
I’m so upset and envious. Upset I can’t do work like that anymore and envious cause he does such a great job. I’ve been soldering for 50 years now. My dad taught me when I was a kid. Building stuff all my life as an electronic technician. Now? I have essential tremors. Fine work like he’s doing is not possible for me anymore. On the bright side when I TiG weld my beads are gorgeous. Don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do that though. Moral or the story? Enjoy today, tomorrow might really suck or not even come along.
Most people that have tried something especially repairs on their own but failed and send it to somewhere else is never going to tell you what they did wrong most likely at least 98% of the time... FAILURE TO ADMIT
man, watching this is mesmerizing. i can only compare it to watching a final drive for the win in the 4th quarter of a divisional game. ok, any nfl game, or college game, whatever i want some tools so i can try. pretty effing cool.
Superb job yet again i had a samsung drive back in the days of ide interface and it was silent and faster than the maxtors i often bought for builds, the second day there was smoke and a chip on the board was almost on fire i took it back and never bought another samsung again .
The diode is there only to protect the components past it in the case something is plugged in backwards/wrong, it did it's job, it's not needed to make the drive work. Have a good day.
Awesome Alex Good job, Good feeling after you got it fixed for make customer happy That’s what I like see y’all doing that as like Alex does… Better than Factory!! LoL thank for video I never get boring watch your video and other… awesome thanks
@NorhtridgeFix I kind of have a question regarding the last few videos where you fixed ssd's and hdd's. With the data recovered from the drives, do you have the customer bring you a new drive to store the recovered data or do you have a storage server or you provide the customer with a drive yourself. How does that process work?
From what I understand on hard drives bios chip tells the controller where all the tracks and sectors are located for each drive individually but that bios file is also copied to a special area on the hard drive is normally not accessible it is never overwritten so if you have a drive and such as this one you could just get a new motherboard if you had the software to read that special bios file off of the hard drive could then flash that to the BIOS chip in the drive would be 100% functional
Can I ask a potentially awkward question? I went to school for EE and did a research Masters in preparation for a PhD. After the MS I came to the attention of a company that wanted to recruit me. They made an offer i could not turn down and so I left school and started working. In this job i realized i just really loved board work. Like to the point I could see myself leaving design to focus on board work. My concern is if I could afford a pay cut (i have no idea what board techs make). So what sort of pay do board techs make? Is it comfortable or what? I can accept a pay cut, but only to a certain extent (i have a house and stuff i still need to pay for). Any input would be awesome!
back in the IDE hard drive days around late 90's ~ 2002 forgot if it was Seagate or Western Digital or both. We would get hard drives in that would spin up , could not read any data. It was because the bearing for the drive motor had a minute amount of play. What we would do is wrap the drive in plastic then put the drive in the freezer overnight. The next day I would take the hard drive out and plug it in to the IDE cable. Unfortunately wasted time waiting for the computer to boot, 80% of the time we could recover all or part of the data. as soon as the hard drive started to thaw showing droplets ( hard drive out of the PC with longer cables) the sooner would stop reading data, a very few we could refreeze and recover more data. Not in these cases, it always amazed me and it was difficult sometimes not to laugh in the clients face when i went to an onsite for a PC that would not boot/ clicking sound. The client would tell me "well the hard drive had been making strange sounds and clicking for about a month, the computer still booted" i would be thinking you should have called us weeks ago. very few we could find a donner hard drive and swap the mainboard, most that did not work....back when that was possible....most lost all their data.
Alex, i'd love to see some videos with you using some of the other tools/meters/equip you have that we don't normally see you use. Or maybe some demonstrations (not that you have time lol). For example the items in the background. Thanks bud.
It's amazing how Hard Drives are repairable...it's definitely the key to keep files stored safety and reliable but is SSD or NVME M.2 that reliable too and can be fixed like hard drives?
@@bryanlatimer-davies1222 Yep, especially because we expect the data on it to have a large life span, and as it turns out these storage media's are not meant for that. But consumers can still buy external HDD's and stuff, expecting "it'll work", but eventually it will fail. Where as if you use something like the cloud, they take care of the redundancy
Last year i found external HDD from scrapbox in electronics shop which had 4tb seagate drive inside it didn't work all blocks were bad, i took it out of housing, checked serial number it was like three years passed warranty. I Wrote a letter to seagate asking what could i do with it, they said that Even though warranty ended, they are willing to give me new one, just send them broken one. Sent it to seagate netherlands ,shipping cot me 5 euros, and in one week they shipped me new 4Tb hdd back. Lol basically free.
I never buy Seagate anything but good for them for replacing it!
why would you buy a broken drive and then ask the company what to do with it to begin with? you received it faulty. what any other company would have done is tell you to recycle it but a technical person would have salvaged the magnets & platters. you got lucky
Niceee! 4tb is very nice to have and very cool from the company!
@@LiquidSnakeSSJ4 it literally says in the first line that he found it 😂🤦🏼♂️
@@hugomatos1999 Manufactures that do that have good customer service
So glad to see that zener diode do it's job and give it's life to save others. 🙂
RIP Hero.
The local scrap man has been generous enough to give me broken electronics. I've been repairing a lot of it and sharing the loot with him. I've also been practicing my solder and reflow work on them. I'm not as quick or as good as you but I can definitely feel a lot of improvement. Donor boards are excellent if you can get them folks, and the bonus is you get free chips to play with if you're into building electronics.
The soldering job on those replaced resistors is amazing, You'd never tell they've been replaced :) Amazing work as always!
Better than factory
I'm impressed. This is the first time that I've caught up with your channel. A few months back my grand-daughter also had a faulty portable Seagate 2TB drive that happened to stop working while it was plugged into the USB port of an HP Laptop which interestingly also died at the same time.
I'm an old school technician when I started out in the business all radios and TVs had tubes. So, I was reluctant to tackle the HDD myself, I rang a few repair shops in Australia (where I live) and was quoted from 900-1500 (A$) to retrieve the data. I guessed that the Laptop must have put a lot than five volts out of it's USB port to the HDD. Poor laptop design?
Luckily for me the Seagate HDD was still in warranty and without hesitation Seagate transported it from Australia to the Netherlands and back for free, great service! So my grand-daughter was able to get back her valuable data and a free new HDD to boot.
Keep the videos coming.😀
I really like the cadence of your speech. Very easy to follow what you are saying. Customers have no excuse to not hear what you say.
Using a bit of flux on your tweezers to pick up SMD components is a great little hack - love it.
@@ravindradaundkar9905 u mean while soldering or what
I am from sri lanka. Colombo. I watch you videos a lot and learned alot. Thank you sir.
You can tell that man is so proud of his work when he succeed and fixes something he smiles from the hart. Good job man.
i enjoy watching masters work. Especially masters with a sense of humor.
Thank you for letting us watch over your shoulder!
We did a great job, well done Alex
I don't understand much about electronics but watch because I feel happy whenever you get something fixed and working. Nice work as always!
I watched a lot of repair learning videos, in various fields, but I do not feel the joy of knowing until I see your method of analyzing and solving faults. many thanks to give to you sir 👍
I like your laugh when you succeed. Shows true passion and love of your work.
Alex, we are on the road to 300k. Please save something very hard to fix for this anniversary. We need the biggest "lets plug it in ---- and it works!" smile that we have ever witnessed.
Data recovery must be one of the most satisfying tasks when successful. Data is so critical, yet people don't back it up often or at all.
Great to see the smile on your face when the fix works!. Nice one Alex!.
Just a quick note. The order I placed last Sunday arrived today in perfect condition. Thank you very much.
Watched many of your videos and used to live in Northridge for a few years in the early 2000s. You make fixing them look so easy. Have a couple of hard drives with the same issues. So now I can see if I can try to fix them.
I had to restrain myself to jump-for-joy Alex, when you fixed the HDD and were able to see the drive and all its files on the screen. One of my big fears center around the loss of data from external back-up HDDs. I always thought that 'Data-Recovery' had to do with complicated dis-assembly and analysis of the disks, so I learned something new again today and now I'm not so anxious about my external HDDs breaking down. This video has contributed to my 'Stress-Reduction'. Who would have thought...lol 🙏👍😄
I don't get much time due to work and family time but always love watching your videos!
Excellent job neighbor!!!! - From a fellow Northridge Resident!
Alex is smiling thinking like, "Yes, yes hard drive spin and Windows tone = $$$". Good Fix Man!
new subscriber, retired electronics tech, nice job! amazing little books with parts, far cry from tubes, transistors, surface mounted devices too cool! was use too the big stuff, lol! nice soldering tweezers!!!
That fine steel wire brush is amazing!
In similar case I used a thin wire instead of zero-ohm resistor.
That steel brush is magic though!
I like your videos and this channel.
Also appreciate the willingness to share with the world your way how you repair.
Good job and keep it up!
I have to make a warning at the beginning of the video.
The method how you measured the fuses on board.
Especially when you measure the second pair of fuses.
If one is bad from those two, you dmm will show they are good.
Take care with that checking method where two or more fuses are in parallel.
Just wow
Method of your repairing is awesome.
That just be so satisfying to successfully complete a fix like this and let the customer know their data is secure.
Alex saving the day once again.
Great video, very informative and educational. I just wish there was somebody as skilful as you in London!
Always learning something new and as I near retirement, want to get back into electronics and have to check out your site. Thanks for another great vid
Liked you showing using flux to pick up the tine parts!
Fly swatter now sold on Northridgefix
If 2 resistors in paralel measure open circuit the both of them are open. Of course you know that. I just found it funny that you kept testing both.
Great... Again.
But... Alex, why in a case like this you don't just bridge the zero ohms resistors, instead replace it?
I would have replaced only one of them with a jumper.
He works professionally
@@kimmygaming3407 -- I he is such a professional, why was he testing both zero ohm resistors for continuity when the are connected in parallel?
Another happy customer! Great job Alex as always!
The is the second video I see from this channel and I am getting addicted, its soo cool 🔥
Amazing work. I wonder if I could buy a pair of these hot tweezers. They seem really useful for that kind of job
When doing data recovery and replacing 0 ohm resistors, could you simply use bridge wires and save the components?
I thought that - why 0 ohms if they're not actually resisting anything?
Another satisfying fix Alex.
Wow, great brush. Nice example.
Great job, was that work done or just the part exploding and melting the board from the original damage?
I'd say part exploded, no repair attempt there
i am an IT guy who wants to know more about electronics, ive been watching your videos almost daily, my target is to know everything about computers and electronics
Grats on 300k subs
Great video. I'm learning lots. I will take a look at your site for some new equipment.
Nice work Alex, Stuart from Melbourne AU.
Gz to 300.000 subscribers from Germany ;)
Good job with this fix. A failing hard drive is one of my fears because that's where I store all my data. I do have an external hard drive for back ups but still it was great to see an HDD gets saved. I'm starting to get hooked on all your videos. I might probably learn a thing or two from these fixes.
great job. My first experience with smd was with a hdd. It was too easy for you Alex.
You've probably talked about it in other videos, but what hot tweezers do you use?
I think maybe I've heard you say it was a Weller station, but I can't find one that is still being manufactured... I'm having a heck of a time finding a decent quality replacement.
Would love to just buy a JBC but I don't have that kind of money 🤑
I would take suggestions from the community too
your channel is very educational
its great ur happy face after each succesfully repair! u re a good guy! Best Wishes from Argentina, and Thanks u for share you knowledge! Really Thanks!
Such few components to make such an impact. I still love this subject after over 20 years
What Hot tweezers do you use?
Hey Alex, I have a question. Since the traces on both those 0ohm resistors were shared, could it have worked to just take one from the left side and solder it onto one of the pairs on the right?
I'm guessing not, but curious as to why they exist like that to begin with.
They are sometimes used as a fuse, 0-ohm resistors are not truly 0 ohms, they still provide some resistance where if their power limit for their size package is greatly exceeded, they will blow
Zachary - Thank you for that. I was just about to research the purpose of zero ohm resistors since at zero ohms of resistance they shouldn't even be called resistors.
No no no, that is NOT flux. That is the gunk from the cooking diode condensing on the PCB. It is VERY classic to see this from diodes and other semiconductors when they go boom. I repeat: IT WAS NOT WORKED ON!
Amazing work as usual.
Lucky fix it was just the fuses on the 12V line. Good one to give me hope when i see customers damaged devices like that and still try to repair them.
i am sure it has been asked plenty of times. What can i do to get practice on repairing electronics? Something like buying broken ebay devices ect...?
What are the 2 little microwave ovens on the top rack of the desk? Are they for coffee and espresso cups?
You make it look so easy,what a pro
Well done (again) ^^!!!
What is the name of the tool you used to solder the R 0 Ohms? You say "no hot air, no soldering iron"...
I love your house hunting series Alex, hope you'll find one that suits your needs. I am also a big fan of your repair works, all are amazing, i've been looking forward to your new uploads! I am also starting a repair shop business at home, and hope someday to have a great shop like yours😊 Goodluck and Godbless!
I’m so upset and envious. Upset I can’t do work like that anymore and envious cause he does such a great job. I’ve been soldering for 50 years now. My dad taught me when I was a kid. Building stuff all my life as an electronic technician. Now? I have essential tremors. Fine work like he’s doing is not possible for me anymore. On the bright side when I TiG weld my beads are gorgeous. Don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do that though. Moral or the story? Enjoy today, tomorrow might really suck or not even come along.
Too wonderful ! :) Thank you !
Most people that have tried something especially repairs on their own but failed and send it to somewhere else is never going to tell you what they did wrong most likely at least 98% of the time... FAILURE TO ADMIT
man, watching this is mesmerizing. i can only compare it to watching a final drive for the win in the 4th quarter of a divisional game. ok, any nfl game, or college game, whatever i want some tools so i can try. pretty effing cool.
Love this channel Alex!!!
Superb job yet again i had a samsung drive back in the days of ide interface and it was silent and faster than the maxtors i often bought for builds, the second day there was smoke and a chip on the board was almost on fire i took it back and never bought another samsung again .
i still have an old maxtor laying around lol
8:38 Alex finally finds a use for that solder sucker...
Amazing! but in your place, I wouldn't have guessed that we should get the files without the diode(s) 😀
The diode is there only to protect the components past it in the case something is plugged in backwards/wrong, it did it's job, it's not needed to make the drive work. Have a good day.
Awesome Alex Good job, Good feeling after you got it fixed for make customer happy That’s what I like see y’all doing that as like Alex does… Better than Factory!! LoL thank for video I never get boring watch your video and other… awesome thanks
I have seen many hard drive repair videos and you make it look too easy. Very impressive. Also,Where are you located?
Ikr
Masterful job as ever! Excellent work
@NorhtridgeFix I kind of have a question regarding the last few videos where you fixed ssd's and hdd's. With the data recovered from the drives, do you have the customer bring you a new drive to store the recovered data or do you have a storage server or you provide the customer with a drive yourself. How does that process work?
Curious, what is the purpose of a 0 resistor? Does that mean no resistance? Is it there only as a form of protection?
Excellent work
Do you sell hot tweezers? Can’t see them on your store??
Where did you learn soldering and basic electronics?
From what I understand on hard drives bios chip tells the controller where all the tracks and sectors are located for each drive individually but that bios file is also copied to a special area on the hard drive is normally not accessible it is never overwritten so if you have a drive and such as this one you could just get a new motherboard if you had the software to read that special bios file off of the hard drive could then flash that to the BIOS chip in the drive would be 100% functional
The general process in data recovery labs is to just replace the ROM chip itself onto the donor board.
Can I ask a potentially awkward question? I went to school for EE and did a research Masters in preparation for a PhD. After the MS I came to the attention of a company that wanted to recruit me. They made an offer i could not turn down and so I left school and started working. In this job i realized i just really loved board work. Like to the point I could see myself leaving design to focus on board work. My concern is if I could afford a pay cut (i have no idea what board techs make). So what sort of pay do board techs make? Is it comfortable or what? I can accept a pay cut, but only to a certain extent (i have a house and stuff i still need to pay for). Any input would be awesome!
That was amazing. How did you even start to get into this field?
Ahhh I really need to get into electronics repair. I love this stuff
Good morning all 🌻🌻😘
Which harddisk casing you use in this video you quickly plugin and drive is opening ❤
back in the IDE hard drive days around late 90's ~ 2002 forgot if it was Seagate or Western Digital or both. We would get hard drives in that would spin up , could not read any data. It was because the bearing for the drive motor had a minute amount of play. What we would do is wrap the drive in plastic then put the drive in the freezer overnight. The next day I would take the hard drive out and plug it in to the IDE cable. Unfortunately wasted time waiting for the computer to boot, 80% of the time we could recover all or part of the data. as soon as the hard drive started to thaw showing droplets ( hard drive out of the PC with longer cables) the sooner would stop reading data, a very few we could refreeze and recover more data. Not in these cases, it always amazed me and it was difficult sometimes not to laugh in the clients face when i went to an onsite for a PC that would not boot/ clicking sound. The client would tell me "well the hard drive had been making strange sounds and clicking for about a month, the computer still booted" i would be thinking you should have called us weeks ago. very few we could find a donner hard drive and swap the mainboard, most that did not work....back when that was possible....most lost all their data.
Alex, i'd love to see some videos with you using some of the other tools/meters/equip you have that we don't normally see you use. Or maybe some demonstrations (not that you have time lol).
For example the items in the background.
Thanks bud.
wait, how did it start without diode? or diode does a short to protect it and it works without it?
Your Videos are my new favourite on TH-cam! Just subscribed to this channel.
Not sure if it has been asked, however are the "hot" tweezers available at Northridge? Thank you for your patience!
Great job .. and the troubleshooting is amazing..and right to the point
It's amazing how Hard Drives are repairable...it's definitely the key to keep files stored safety and reliable but is SSD or NVME M.2 that reliable too and can be fixed like hard drives?
Just like HDDs, it would be repairable as long as both the controller and the storage medium itself (NAND flash) are intact.
Nothing that holds valuable data can be considered reliable, keep data on three separate drives, with one off site.
@@bryanlatimer-davies1222 🎯
NOTHING is 100%, even paper, it can burn. 😉 Everything in this world is temporary, even us.
@@bryanlatimer-davies1222 Yep, especially because we expect the data on it to have a large life span, and as it turns out these storage media's are not meant for that. But consumers can still buy external HDD's and stuff, expecting "it'll work", but eventually it will fail. Where as if you use something like the cloud, they take care of the redundancy
I guess I finally understand the use of zero-ohm resistors, they're fuses!
or cheap option switches.
Love the content and the outro is awesome
Awesome work.
Those resistors are clearly in parallel! If you read “open” on one, *both* are broken
:o)
I want to hear last smile with a good job gusture!!
Where have you purchased the book with the components? Thanks in advance.
They sell them