failing hdd, bad contacts?

[clearchris]

I just replaced my hdd because it was slow and I was getting very small amounts. f data corruption. Thankfully I was able to get my data off.

So I figure Ill do a once over on the drive electronics before I chuck the disk. Here is what I find:



I'm not sure if that's corrosion, board coating, or both. Whatever it is I bet it would certainly interfere with the connection the pins make (there arent any cables, just some pointy pins that make contact with the board on these pads.

Anyone have a suggestion for cleaning this without destroying it?

[eccerr0r]

Re: failing hdd, bad contacts?

Kind of doubt that was causing the problem, if you look carefully the contacts made indentations on where it was contacting the board before it was removed... Nowhere near the landing where the contamination is.

Not sure what it is either though, my guess is that it's some mask or something that wasn't removed properly. Supposedly the board was gold plated too, Could try taking a soft #1 pencil and use that to scrape it a bit, making sure that you wipe up any carbon that comes off of the pencil... *shrug*

[clearchris]

Re: failing hdd, bad contacts?

Hmm. Yeah, I saw those too. I have learned, through hard experience, to take care of obvious stuff first, because you feel really stupid if it ends up being the problem. There is also some of it, thinner and less obvious that intersects the contact point on the fourth or fifth pad up.

Scrape with a pencil sounds possibly destructive, ie slip and scrape a few traces. I was thinking maybe pencil eraser then flux and iron to burn it off. Maybe then light solder and wipe off for a thin tinning layer.

The pictures look gold, but the color isn't right, its more of a dull brass than a gold plate. I remember the old school gold plated ram chips were always super shiny... I'm guessing some copper aloy.

[SteveNielsen]

Re: failing hdd, bad contacts?

I'd try the pencil eraser lightly and then wipe with some alcohol. Fluxing and heating I don't think are going to help much and it's better not to risk lifting pads and traces with heat.

[Elysarian]

Re: failing hdd, bad contacts?

does nobody else use PCB cleaners any more?
I have a couple still in one of my tool boxes someplace - a rubber tipped one and a fibreglass one from my prototyping days (I also have a block that's great for cleaning up the edge connectors on expansion cards and RAM modules)

[clearchris]

Re: failing hdd, bad contacts?

Pencil eraser worked great. I didn't expect it all to come off that easy.

My searching on google found nothing aside from brushes, sprays, and ultrasonic pcb cleaners. Sounds like a pencil with an eraser?

[Elysarian]

Re: failing hdd, bad contacts?

The rubber one I have is basically a pencil but instead of a graphite core it has rubber that's impregnated with a mild abrasive.

The fibreglass one is like a propelling pencil

[SteveNielsen]

Re: failing hdd, bad contacts?

Did that fix the drive problem?

I have used different cleaning items such as Elysarian describes but they didn't perform any better for me than a normal pencil eraser, which is also impregnated with abrasive material. What I would NOT use is a pen ink eraser which has a lot more and much coarser abrasive material (the grey type found on some pens and double ended erasers). That will cause too much damage to pads and traces.