Printed circuit board (PCB) plays a great role in hard drive’s working. If it becomes damaged, various issues can occur. Now, this post will expose the 7 most common symptoms of printed circuit board failure on a hard drive.
Printed circuit board (PCB) is a control board which is located on the back of the hard drive. It controls the electricity flow passing through the hard drive. More specially, when a hard drive is working, electricity flow will go through the board and then get into the hard drive. In this way, the spindle motor inside will spin up and the read/write drive heads will be able to move around. The read and write commands will pass through the printed circuit board to the drive as well. Thus, printed circuit board is extremely important in hard drive functions. It can make drive damaged in a moment, also leading to data corruption like PST corruption.
Unfortunately, printed circuit board can get corrupted or break down for various reasons, such as the aging, buildup of heat, etc. Now, so as to help you recognize printed circuit board failure, in the followings, we will debunk its 7 symptoms.
1. Burning Smell
If you catch your hard drive smoking with a strange burning odor accompanied, it is very likely that the printed circuit board is burned or damaged.
2. Heat up Too Quickly
When hard drive works, constant heat will be created. Yet, in normal situations, the process of heating up will demand a certain long time. If a hard drive always heat up much more quickly than before, you can suspect the printed circuit board is faulty.
3. Drive Loads Slowly
When you find that your hard drive loads pretty slowly and meanwhile any error messages pop up, it reflects that something wrong is with your hard drive. At this time, the printed circuit board issues should be taken into consideration as well.
4. PC Poor Performance
Provided that your computer performance becomes much poorer after a serious electrical storm, there are chances that the culprit is printed circuit board failure. Power surges and lightning strikes can damage printed circuit board with ease.
5. Strange Clicking Sounds
As we know, one of the most effective ways to diagnose physically damaged hard drive is to see if it makes clicking sounds. If you hear grinding noises from a drive, it means that some physical issues have occurred to the drive, of course including the printed circuit board failure.
6. Drive Disappears in Booting
If the hard drive is an internal one in your computer, it must be the drive which your PC will boot from. Therefore, if your computer cannot boot up and the drive disappears from your PC, the drive might have a problem with its printed circuit board.
7. Stop Spinning up
Generally, when you try to read or write the data on a hard drive, the drive will spin up. Thus, if a hard drive stops spinning up, it may be because that there is no power from the drive. In this situation, the printed circuit board could be the key problem.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including fix mdf and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com