Watching this gave me the confidence to try and fix a dead Crucial 500bg ssd. AND I fixed it, removed a shorted capacitor, and copied all data to a new drive! THANKS!
electronics repair is a small hobby for me, i bought a thermal camera with a macrolens for smartphone for only 200$, based on your videos i learned about the smd caps, i repaired a dvb-t2 receiver and charger for a cordless drill, thermal camera is amazing
I just spray the circuit with an air can upside down so it can freeze the thing and plug the power and the component that doesn't have ice that's the one I must change and it worked like a charm, and I spend like... what? 2 bucks?
DID NOT KNOW - It is possible to recover data from a bad SSD. I will remember this if my company ever need to recover such a drive. Thanks for your expertise.
Bro, I just bought the 4tb version of this drive during amazon prime day. Going to keep watching the video! Hope these drives aren’t prone to failure because out of the other options I had this one was the more expensive
i miss the trancey outro music you used to use, but that aside another great job alex, i just repaired my 1 blown mosfet laptop this week, your videos have helped out a lot thanks
As a photographer and a videographer having multiple backups are important even to the cloud when sharing with clients. Have you ever thought about instantly sharing lost files with customers through a cloud service and then they wouldn’t have to wait a 1-3 days to receive a a copy drive ?
so who's responsible for data security, integrity or availability then? I would only use cloud if the client purchased it and provided access and instructions. No liability then, no costly lawsuits, no distractions. Otherwise you get huge risk for nearly no reward.
@@groszek7657 You’re overthinking the process. What you're saying is somewhat true but anyone can steal the package, take the data, the package could get lost now you have more money and time resending submitting claims through the delivery service. I was just thinking about the convenience of solving this issue in 10 minutes and then sometime later that same day this distraught customer could have their data at their disposal. From a photographer standpoint, if my hard drive fails (hopefully never) I’m sending it here first asap no questions. On my end I have customers to fulfill, and if the drive gets fixed over the weekend I may not see my files for a couple of days and would have to push customers completion dates back. If he was to upload to a cloud source the same day it’s fixed I could get back to work asap. That’s world class customer service. You're making it seem like people are sending in hard drives that host blueprints for missiles from Raytheon or the “blacklist”. And if they were you would probably have an agent drop the drive off and someone pick it up, no cloud, no mailing flash drives back with pertinent data. And last I’m sure he has people sign a clause that he’s not responsible for any data loss.
@@groszek7657 You can encrypt the data and share the key only with the customer. That's much safer (both in terms of preventing damage and in preventing data theft) than it is to send a physical, unencrypted drive.
That drive is definitely showing some odd behavior... It's probably on the brink of completely failing. Anytime I've had a drive that takes forever to load it usually fails within a month or two
Im surprised you connect these to you're rig and dont have a test bench running a pxe version if Windows like thst sergie win10 it has all the tech tools. Amazing work as always its worth it to have these capacitors on hand as it seems thats the crux of these drives.
@@goku445 if it has the tools I'd use for the simple fact I'd not have to bring up terminal everytime I wanted to run something or mess with config files. With a PXE environment built with tech tools it's best of both worlds and it's loaded at the time you need it no remnants.
@@maklogetrich2378 yeah oddly mine was labeled PXE but that don't make sense as pxe is like loading a os over the network via the Network card when no HDD is installed ie thin clients.
Another great video! Can you do one over how to set up the anti-glare light? Loving the NF V2 microscope but haven't used the anti-glare yet. Even without the anti-glare the microscope is amazing!
You have a video explaining diagnostics of capacitors, diodes, resistors, mosfetts, etc... like how to test them, what reading is good, and which one is bad ? When you say " this diode doesn't have short " how do you know ?
if you measuring voltage drop on the diode (diode testing mode) it shows readings between 0.4 to 0.7V depending on diode type anode to cathode and OL cathode to anode. Readings can be different when measuring in circuit. Failed diodes will either be shorted (near 0 voltage drop) or they burn open (OL).
At 3:02 you show what looks like 4 caps near centre of page and you have checked 3 of them, omitting to check a slightly off-colour one in the right hand position of a triangle of them. Why????? Go back and check that one.
This video reminds me of the song "Knock Three Times..." by Tony Orlando an Dawn. Just alter the words slightly to "Flash Three Times..." Northridge thermal cameras rock.
I’ve had the same drives for idk how long, 7-8 years 🤣 just lucky I guess oh and hard drive sentinel…what a rollercoaster ride at the end!!! You got some skills sir!!!
Hey Alex, I recently stumbled onto your channel and really enjoy your educational content... I got a quick question though, in the video it looks as if you never soldiered a new cap onto the board... does the drive work fine without it or did you have to replace it off cam... if it works fine without the cap, then id like to find out what that section of the PCB controls Thanks :) -Aloha
How do you have the output of the camera HDMI connected to a computer? Capture card? Which one. The camera setup is good....most I have seen people just capture to USB and it is kinda laggy....it would be great to see how everything is set up.
Wow this video was a little different than your usual obvious spot the short case. Awesome work, Alex! I live in Europe but whenever I end up with a dead hard drive, I'll send it to Cali.
Correct me if im wrong, but the Micron 100 drives are the same as this Crucial 500 series? I might have the number wrong. Had a few brews... Thanks for the video!
13:00 Yeah! You did it, but that's not the normal function of "recognize" an SSD. It takes to much time to recognize it. May you flash it with a new or different firmware to see. 🤔
as always brilliant , i sent a message a few days ago r.e. uk mailing . give my thanks to Dolly for the fast reply very helpful and as said thank you for sharing your skills . i am a hobby guy just figuring it out but your films are so helpful have you ever done a video on multimeters and just wrapping your head around ohms and resistance and values ?
I would start to copy files ASAP when the drive finally pops up, in Explorer, just CTRL+A, CTRL+C and then CTRL+V at a really fast, empty receiving drive especially if everything looks dicey like this. I guess there must be software that is appropriate for this kind of emergency, as just copying file by file, will not work easily if the drive is a system drive with a lot of system files that may refuse to be copied. Ideally, you would want to copy files first, and then image the drive, if possible, so that the user can get back a working operating system, provided that there are no read errors or corrupt system files.
Any disk cloning software will do if you need everything. Otherwise if only specific data is needed (documents, photos, etc) windows copy is as good as anything. System files are just files if connected as an additional drive so everything would copy fine.
I figured it would be worth mentioning that I have not had a single Crucial drive fail in the last 14 years...and I have used THOUSANDS of them. It may be possible you have seen a few drives fail due to a common issue, but you make it sound like it's a common failure. Ceramic caps fail when ceramic caps are physically damaged. There isn't some conspiracy affecting Crucial drives that I have seen.
I worked at a computer recycling and refurbishing company. We tested hundreds of hard drives, and computers every day. We had many crucial drives that were DOA. That doesn't mean though that it was a fault of the drive itself. The computer it was in was probably the cause of the failure due to a short and most dead ssd's we found were pulled out of dead computers. And most of them from laptops.
Your just an awesome ripair men 🎉❤ keep it up i really enjoy your content and its even inspire me to learn more im depth about repairing and diagnosing hardware 🎉❤😊
He soldered it to only one pad of the two purposely so that it is no longer part of or affecting the circuit. He could have just placed it on his desk, but they are so tiny, that might be a good way to lose it. The flux and re-soldering after removing is not necessary at all. It is just his way that he chooses to go about things.
Bro! Your work is on point and you have inspired hope in me. Had a 2.5 inch 235 gig ssd drive go down recently and suspect that a capacitor has fried. How much would something like this run? Many places are hitting heads with their prices and I am still waiting for another stimulus from Biden. Lol!
I have a ocz, ssd drive, it is found in the bios, but will only show up in windows when I remove the power cable and then reinsert it. It briefly shows folders but I cannot read any of these files, and it will promptly lock my computer up, I have tried chkdsk, but it just locks up, think it’s a hardware failure, how much do you charge to fix?
"Let me know what you think". Nice question. I think you attempted to kill NAND chips on purpose several times. Powering drive with actual failure in NAND power circuit at closest point to chips. Removing faulty MLCC in most critical place "just to check thermal image". At this point all NAND chips were getting high frequency ripple of 5V instead of nice and smooth 1.8V. You should try to clean loaded shotgun barrel from its outcome with ramrod using your experience in data recovery.
On my Asus gaming laptop, when I remove the heatsink from the motherboard I see what appears to be two types of thermal paste, one on the cpu and gpu and another as a gel on the mosfets. What kind of pastes or gel do you recommend I use in each case?
I am posting the same comments here because this is the most recent video on data recovery Which SSDs (Nvme) drives do you see as less likely to fail from your hands-on experience? Which drives do you see often in your shop that "fail"?
Reading the files does not mean able to copy them. Had the same problem in an ssd ( too long for the disk to open , copying them with 700 kb and many errors) . It was an intenso ssd 1gb . Partial solution was to boot into linux and start either cloning the partitions either copying single files no matter how long it took.
Has anyone had their HP Optane drive fail with a F032 code? Mine failed with important information still sitting on it. I was able to backup alot of files with OneDrive but those critical file were being stored in appdata. What can I do/
Computer ardware today has much more errors than it had before! It may well be unstable current from the power supply. I have owned several samsung EVO sdd and other mechanical HDD. from WD. and samsung and other brands without errors. Also video card and motherboard without errors. Today there are many problems with this. much more than before.
Awesome Alex more new video.., Love watch your other new videos... Awesome sauce smile Now watching your awesome repair... Better than Factory is matter of scientific fact right there.. Awesome
I feel the electronics of today is garbage compared to a few years back everything is getting more compact and smaller that the quality is not good and reliable
Watching this gave me the confidence to try and fix a dead Crucial 500bg ssd. AND I fixed it, removed a shorted capacitor, and copied all data to a new drive! THANKS!
My version is when blue Monitors show up and I try to restart the drive and no shows up, I was worrying much data.
electronics repair is a small hobby for me, i bought a thermal camera with a macrolens for smartphone for only 200$, based on your videos i learned about the smd caps, i repaired a dvb-t2 receiver and charger for a cordless drill, thermal camera is amazing
What thermal camera do you have? Is it the Flir One Pro OTG camera?
I just spray the circuit with an air can upside down so it can freeze the thing and plug the power and the component that doesn't have ice that's the one I must change and it worked like a charm, and I spend like... what? 2 bucks?
what thermal cam brother
Amazing work Alex! Thanks for sharing your technical skills and knowledge with us! 👍
DID NOT KNOW - It is possible to recover data from a bad SSD. I will remember this if my company ever need to recover such a drive. Thanks for your expertise.
Thank you sir...didnt know its so complicated...guess only persons like you are gifted with this kind of digital knowledge.... watching from Singapore
I love that thermal camera! I want a thermal camera! Great repair and refulgent result! Bravo!
Bro, I just bought the 4tb version of this drive during amazon prime day. Going to keep watching the video! Hope these drives aren’t prone to failure because out of the other options I had this one was the more expensive
I’ve used a few of these drives with good success over the past few years
Keep any SSD cool and don't use for swap/ pagefile
@@BozesanVlad should be fine then, it’s not my system drive, and only getting used for bulk storage and lighter steam games here and there.
Hi from 🇬🇧 fixated on the skill you have with electronics. 👍
i miss the trancey outro music you used to use, but that aside another great job alex, i just repaired my 1 blown mosfet laptop this week, your videos have helped out a lot
thanks
As a photographer and a videographer having multiple backups are important even to the cloud when sharing with clients. Have you ever thought about instantly sharing lost files with customers through a cloud service and then they wouldn’t have to wait a 1-3 days to receive a a copy drive ?
so who's responsible for data security, integrity or availability then? I would only use cloud if the client purchased it and provided access and instructions. No liability then, no costly lawsuits, no distractions. Otherwise you get huge risk for nearly no reward.
@@groszek7657 You’re overthinking the process. What you're saying is somewhat true but anyone can steal the package, take the data, the package could get lost now you have more money and time resending submitting claims through the delivery service. I was just thinking about the convenience of solving this issue in 10 minutes and then sometime later that same day this distraught customer could have their data at their disposal. From a photographer standpoint, if my hard drive fails (hopefully never) I’m sending it here first asap no questions. On my end I have customers to fulfill, and if the drive gets fixed over the weekend I may not see my files for a couple of days and would have to push customers completion dates back. If he was to upload to a cloud source the same day it’s fixed I could get back to work asap. That’s world class customer service.
You're making it seem like people are sending in hard drives that host blueprints for missiles from Raytheon or the “blacklist”. And if they were you would probably have an agent drop the drive off and someone pick it up, no cloud, no mailing flash drives back with pertinent data.
And last I’m sure he has people sign a clause that he’s not responsible for any data loss.
@@groszek7657 You can encrypt the data and share the key only with the customer. That's much safer (both in terms of preventing damage and in preventing data theft) than it is to send a physical, unencrypted drive.
That drive is definitely showing some odd behavior... It's probably on the brink of completely failing. Anytime I've had a drive that takes forever to load it usually fails within a month or two
Brilliant work!
I had a 2TB MX500 suddenly die and crucial promptly replaced it. I also have a 1TB with 5 TBW that shows 85% life. I have moved onto another vendor.
Good video Alex. Like the keep the original drive makes sense.
I AM grateful for the knowledge you share. 🙏
Great fix Alex. That's good that you keep the files until the person has received there new flash drive incase it goes missing awesome stuff
Alex, love your work!
You're a genius sir. Amazing
Im surprised you connect these to you're rig and dont have a test bench running a pxe version if Windows like thst sergie win10 it has all the tech tools. Amazing work as always its worth it to have these capacitors on hand as it seems thats the crux of these drives.
Using windows as a professional SMH.
@@goku445 if it has the tools I'd use for the simple fact I'd not have to bring up terminal everytime I wanted to run something or mess with config files.
With a PXE environment built with tech tools it's best of both worlds and it's loaded at the time you need it no remnants.
@@shadowarez1337 I think you mean PE version
@@maklogetrich2378 yeah oddly mine was labeled PXE but that don't make sense as pxe is like loading a os over the network via the Network card when no HDD is installed ie thin clients.
May I inquire as to what brand you use for the recovery drive that you send to the customer? Thank you, sir!
Great diags... Experience and top quality tools For the Win.
If someone don't have thermal camera, may be possible to find faulty component with isoprolyl alcohol, but this is hard. What do you think?
Io risolvo anche senza fotocamera. Il processo è un po più lungo ma ti assicuro che se fatto bene è perfetto. Si chiama metodo kelvin a 4 punte
Another great video! Can you do one over how to set up the anti-glare light? Loving the NF V2 microscope but haven't used the anti-glare yet. Even without the anti-glare the microscope is amazing!
SHARING IS CARING
It's amazing watching you work, Alex. Great video.
You have a video explaining diagnostics of capacitors, diodes, resistors, mosfetts, etc... like how to test them, what reading is good, and which one is bad ?
When you say " this diode doesn't have short " how do you know ?
if you measuring voltage drop on the diode (diode testing mode) it shows readings between 0.4 to 0.7V depending on diode type anode to cathode and OL cathode to anode. Readings can be different when measuring in circuit. Failed diodes will either be shorted (near 0 voltage drop) or they burn open (OL).
Thanks for your videos hope you enjoyned your vacation
Great job man.
At 3:02 you show what looks like 4 caps near centre of page and you have checked 3 of them, omitting to check a slightly off-colour one in the right hand position of a triangle of them. Why????? Go back and check that one.
This video reminds me of the song "Knock Three Times..." by Tony Orlando an Dawn. Just alter the words slightly to "Flash Three Times..." Northridge thermal cameras rock.
I’ve had the same drives for idk how long, 7-8 years 🤣 just lucky I guess oh and hard drive sentinel…what a rollercoaster ride at the end!!! You got some skills sir!!!
GRRRREAT JOB ALEX !!!
Nice work captain. Another Crucible drive. Garbage.
Hey Alex, I recently stumbled onto your channel and really enjoy your educational content... I got a quick question though,
in the video it looks as if you never soldiered a new cap onto the board... does the drive work fine without it or did you have to replace it off cam... if it works fine without the cap, then id like to find out what that section of the PCB controls Thanks :) -Aloha
Good job mate 👍
How do you have the output of the camera HDMI connected to a computer? Capture card? Which one. The camera setup is good....most I have seen people just capture to USB and it is kinda laggy....it would be great to see how everything is set up.
Fweeew!!! Such suspense until finally a successful fix... Who would have thought that there was such Drama and Suspense in Electronics...lol 😰😊
Wow this video was a little different than your usual obvious spot the short case. Awesome work, Alex! I live in Europe but whenever I end up with a dead hard drive, I'll send it to Cali.
Another great repair. thanks
i need one of these cameras ! , it save you al lot of time...awesome !!
Any chance you can add your multimeter readings on the screen - will make it easier to understand. Keep up the good work !!!
Yeah the did nothing Show it 😅
How much does this roughly cost? I got a WD blue 1tb ssd that died on me. 2 days ago and I bought it only 7 months ago?
Thank you for the video, it is a valuable information... love it
Question regarding ssd drives:
Crucial or Kensington ( or Western digital?)
Is safe to remove a cap and power on an electronic device? I mean, without the capacitor maybe something can go wrong. (Make more damage than before)
Its just a bypass capacitor doesn't mater
Correct me if im wrong, but the Micron 100 drives are the same as this Crucial 500 series? I might have the number wrong. Had a few brews... Thanks for the video!
Personally I turn off automounting of new volumes and then see what appears in Disk Management when attaching a new drive or device 😀🤷♂
Says with disappointment: 'look at this, we have a short in this capacitor '. Brilliant 😅
13:00 Yeah! You did it, but that's not the normal function of "recognize" an SSD. It takes to much time to recognize it. May you flash it with a new or different firmware to see. 🤔
I´ve seen many video from Electronics Repair School and a capacitor that becomes hot is always faulty.
Alex Hi, Thank you for your educational videos. I wonder where are from. have you ever been to Turkey :)
The smile on your face was priceless when the drive booted.
as always brilliant , i sent a message a few days ago r.e. uk mailing . give my thanks to Dolly for the fast reply very helpful and as said thank you for sharing your skills . i am a hobby guy just figuring it out but your films are so helpful have you ever done a video on multimeters and just wrapping your head around ohms and resistance and values ?
cmd >as admin >>> diskpart >>> lis disk >>> select dis num >>> det dis😉
I would start to copy files ASAP when the drive finally pops up, in Explorer, just CTRL+A, CTRL+C and then CTRL+V at a really fast, empty receiving drive especially if everything looks dicey like this. I guess there must be software that is appropriate for this kind of emergency, as just copying file by file, will not work easily if the drive is a system drive with a lot of system files that may refuse to be copied. Ideally, you would want to copy files first, and then image the drive, if possible, so that the user can get back a working operating system, provided that there are no read errors or corrupt system files.
Any disk cloning software will do if you need everything. Otherwise if only specific data is needed (documents, photos, etc) windows copy is as good as anything. System files are just files if connected as an additional drive so everything would copy fine.
On those "slow reading drives" i like to use linux and ddrescue to make a RAW drive image.
Why not starting with a thermal cam ?
What do you have to study know about these things? I want to study and have a business like this. I've always wanted to fix broken electronics.
And now we perform De-Caprio!!
Always the Crucials!
Smart, very smart to not send the original with the backup. BTW Have you ever done repairs on Midi controllers, specifically the Ableton Push 2?
I figured it would be worth mentioning that I have not had a single Crucial drive fail in the last 14 years...and I have used THOUSANDS of them.
It may be possible you have seen a few drives fail due to a common issue, but you make it sound like it's a common failure.
Ceramic caps fail when ceramic caps are physically damaged. There isn't some conspiracy affecting Crucial drives that I have seen.
I worked at a computer recycling and refurbishing company. We tested hundreds of hard drives, and computers every day. We had many crucial drives that were DOA. That doesn't mean though that it was a fault of the drive itself. The computer it was in was probably the cause of the failure due to a short and most dead ssd's we found were pulled out of dead computers. And most of them from laptops.
Heat can kill ssds (for example laptops), or using them as swap (like apple do it on its new devices)
The world is full of possibilities
Your just an awesome ripair men 🎉❤ keep it up i really enjoy your content and its even inspire me to learn more im depth about repairing and diagnosing hardware 🎉❤😊
Great job I love your work alex
Hey, how about SSD Sabrent Rocket High Performance M.2 NVMe Gen3 x 4 Solid State Drive ? Can you save him ?
instead of posting a new hard drive would it be cheaper and safer to uploaded it for the client?
if that drive is full then the downloading time for the customer will take forever
@@AaronJohnProductionThen don't do it for people that have crap internet.. Common sense needs to come into play when doing things.
did u mail original drive once client received backup?
Wooooooww that's awesome man!
Someone tell me what did he actually do with the capacitor? I saw he put some flux but that's it
He soldered it to only one pad of the two purposely so that it is no longer part of or affecting the circuit. He could have just placed it on his desk, but they are so tiny, that might be a good way to lose it. The flux and re-soldering after removing is not necessary at all. It is just his way that he chooses to go about things.
I don't understand why the capacitor is even needed if the drive works without it?
Bro! Your work is on point and you have inspired hope in me. Had a 2.5 inch 235 gig ssd drive go down recently and suspect that a capacitor has fried. How much would something like this run? Many places are hitting heads with their prices and I am still waiting for another stimulus from Biden. Lol!
I think something else is also failing due to the long loading time, maybe the controller is taking its last breaths
Plz recommend me which software to recover hard drive data ?
You are a legend
Crucial doing it's best Samsung impression
You seem to have two very full drives in your pc 😂😂
I have a ocz, ssd drive, it is found in the bios, but will only show up in windows when I remove the power cable and then reinsert it. It briefly shows folders but I cannot read any of these files, and it will promptly lock my computer up, I have tried chkdsk, but it just locks up, think it’s a hardware failure, how much do you charge to fix?
Woow , thermal camera
"Let me know what you think". Nice question. I think you attempted to kill NAND chips on purpose several times. Powering drive with actual failure in NAND power circuit at closest point to chips. Removing faulty MLCC in most critical place "just to check thermal image". At this point all NAND chips were getting high frequency ripple of 5V instead of nice and smooth 1.8V. You should try to clean loaded shotgun barrel from its outcome with ramrod using your experience in data recovery.
What would you have done?
On my Asus gaming laptop, when I remove the heatsink from the motherboard I see what appears to be two types of thermal paste, one on the cpu and gpu and another as a gel on the mosfets. What kind of pastes or gel do you recommend I use in each case?
I thought you could only test caps when they're desoldered.
Hi from Seychelles
hello I have adata ssd su630 which is behave like leave connection at my next reboot and says not device found
I always learn much from you. Thanks for the effort.
Which multimeter do you use ?
Why don't you put the thermal camera on an arm so you have both hands free?
Cuz arm is broken
Then his desk will look like spiderman
I am posting the same comments here because this is the most recent video on data recovery
Which SSDs (Nvme) drives do you see as less likely to fail from your hands-on experience? Which drives do you see often in your shop that "fail"?
Hello from Chile!
Great stuff! See you soon brother!
Reading the files does not mean able to copy them. Had the same problem in an ssd ( too long for the disk to open , copying them with 700 kb and many errors) . It was an intenso ssd 1gb . Partial solution was to boot into linux and start either cloning the partitions either copying single files no matter how long it took.
Already copied.
. Perfect. Then the slow opening of the drive was due to something else. Awesome job.
Intenso ist der größte Dreck..da wird verbaut was gerade auf Lager ist..hab schon etliche kaputte SSD von denen gehabt!
Has anyone had their HP Optane drive fail with a F032 code? Mine failed with important information still sitting on it. I was able to backup alot of files with OneDrive but those critical file were being stored in appdata. What can I do/
amazing work habits ...
Awesome ✌🏻✌🏻✌🏻
Computer ardware today has much more errors than it had before! It may well be unstable current from the power supply.
I have owned several samsung EVO sdd and other mechanical HDD. from WD. and samsung and other brands without errors. Also video card and motherboard without errors.
Today there are many problems with this. much more than before.
Can't you connect your multimeter via usb or bluetooth to the pc to visualise the measurements? :)
Awesome Alex more new video.., Love watch your other new videos... Awesome sauce smile Now watching your awesome repair... Better than Factory is matter of scientific fact right there.. Awesome
Damn I thought these drives were cheap enough to just buy another when they go wrong.
Great job❤❤
Who tried ssd full of data and freeze you can't delete any data on it you can't reformat data still coming back
I feel the electronics of today is garbage compared to a few years back everything is getting more compact and smaller that the quality is not good and reliable
Hello from Kenai Alaska.... Richard speaking Smile
Kenai? That's crazy. I'm thinking of moving to Anchorage
@@humble2246 really? That's awesome man