I have a 4TB HDD that my boss was throwing away cuz he couldn't figure out how to use it. It's a perfectly fine hard drive that he pulled out of a client machine and it had like a controller board that was running it that broke. I Haven't seen the controller board and we don't have it anymore.
I don't want to throw away a perfectly fine hard-disk especially with this capacity. If I can find a way to use it, I get to keep it. Please help.
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Did this come out of an external drive enclosure?
You might be able to find a broken drive of the same model being sold for parts on Ebay, and hope that it has a working board. Other than that, no chance.
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without the controller board this drive will be useless.
You might be able to find a replacement board for it but since it won’t have bad block and other specific data it should be considered unreliable for storing data, that is assuming the platters and heads even work as they should.
E-waste. You might be able to find a controller board from a dead drive that would work but it would be more hassle than it’s worth.
Its missing to control board and without that it’s a piece of junk
I would bet that the controller board was intentionally removed in an attempt at data security. Your odds of actually making it work are pretty low. Rip it apart and use the magnets to entertain yourself, make a mobile out of the platters. You have much less headache.
Someone ripped off your connector Circuit Board.
Well you need the board that was there as that board had sata connector and most likely controller to tell drive how to work.
The controller board is the important part. This is just $10 worth of mylar.
With price on used hdd’s(not to say that thats a good idea) it would make no sense to be honest, you pay half of another used 4tb dri e just for spare pcb plus shipping for something which you are not 100% sure will work when you get another controll board, which may or may not be broken and different revision.
For refernce a fully working used hdd 4tb capacity is 33e with 100% health, in the middle of europe, would not make much sense wasting time and money.
Is it SAS or mini SAS? I see a cable that kinda looks like that in some pictures…searching for that might get you on the right track.
You sir/mama have a paper weight.
What does the manual say?
A replacement controller board should be pretty easy to come by.
Its got some cool magnets inside. Thats about all its good for now.
It hasn’t got a bottom!
Thats the connector for the control board. The board has the connector with the SATA plug on it.
There’s a Barracuda ST4000LM024 ‘for parts’ HD on ebay for $20 shipped if you want to grab the controller board from the same model and use it. Faster used 4TB drives with a return policy are $45 so I wouldn’t bother.
No idea what the damage was on the ebay one so don’t do it if you aren’t super curious/nosey. Data recovery sites use ‘same model’ boards like this at times but you don’t have any guarantees on the condition of the donar or the disk needing fixing.
E-waste without the controller board, its proprietary.
What you see there is the connector for the control board.
Normally it should look something like this.
EDIT: you probably cannot save that yourself. Maybe if you find the board and get really lucky.
https://preview.redd.it/9jjicioehs7d1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=da81371897308bf6f31110c57b966a0e4d7c08f8
The part with your usual sata connections? That’s ripped off of it. Don’t think it’s worth the hassle to find a dead donor drive which you can take the circuit board from.
That drive it’s long gone m8
I wouldn’t bother with it tbh. you can buy those HDDs for pretty cheap if you really want one
[https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-ST4000LM024-Internal-Drive/dp/B01LXCE9W9](https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-ST4000LM024-Internal-Drive/dp/B01LXCE9W9)
Well, it used to be a SATA drive, now it is useless.