Oxidisation of Seagate & WDC PCBs
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From: William R. Walsh on 8 Apr 2010 23:03 Hi! > The thread discusses oxidisation of contact pads in current Seagate > and Western Digital hard drives. I've seen minor occurrences of it and wondered what it was, but only on the "one use" contact pads on the bottom of the drive's PCB. (My guess is that these are used to set the drive up for its first time use and do some basic tests to assure the new drive is functional.) Some drives had more of this apparent oxidation than others, but all of the ones I've seen had it from the moment they were removed from the package. It hasn't gotten any worse and these drives continue to operate properly. I checked a few at random and did not find a similar effect on the contacts going to the spindle motor or headstack. William
From: Franc Zabkar on 9 Apr 2010 22:15 On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 14:03:39 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd(a)gmail.com> put finger to keyboard and composed: >On Apr 8, 12:11�am, Franc Zabkar <fzab...(a)iinternode.on.net> wrote: >> Is this the fallout from RoHS? > >Maybe not. There are other known culprits, like the drywall (gypsum >board, >sheetrock... whatever it's called in your region) that outgasses >hydrogen >sulphide. Some US construction of a few years ago is so bad with >this >toxic and corrosive gas emission that demolition of nearly-new >construction >is called for. > >Corrosion of nearby copper is one of the symptoms of the nasty >product. It's not just Russia that has this problem. The same issue comes up frequently at the HDD Guru forums. - Franc Zabkar -- Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
From: Sergey Kubushyn on 10 Apr 2010 18:33 In sci.electronics.repair Franc Zabkar <fzabkar(a)iinternode.on.net> wrote: > On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 14:03:39 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd(a)gmail.com> > put finger to keyboard and composed: > >>On Apr 8, 12:11�am, Franc Zabkar <fzab...(a)iinternode.on.net> wrote: > >>> Is this the fallout from RoHS? >> >>Maybe not. There are other known culprits, like the drywall (gypsum >>board, >>sheetrock... whatever it's called in your region) that outgasses >>hydrogen >>sulphide. Some US construction of a few years ago is so bad with >>this >>toxic and corrosive gas emission that demolition of nearly-new >>construction >>is called for. >> >>Corrosion of nearby copper is one of the symptoms of the nasty >>product. > > It's not just Russia that has this problem. The same issue comes up > frequently at the HDD Guru forums. I'm right here in the US and I had 3 of 3 WD 1TB drives failed at the same time in RAID1 thus making the entire array dead. It is not that you can simply buff that dark stuff off and you're good to go. Drive itself tries to recover from failures by rewriting service info (remapping etc.) but connection is unreliable and it trashes the entire disk beyound repair. Then you have that infamous "click of death"... BTW, it is not just WD; others are also that bad. They had good old gold plated male/female headers on older drives and those were reliable. Newer drives had, sorry for an expression, "gold plated" pads and springy contacts from the drive heads. That would have them something like $0.001 saving per drive wrt those headers and they took that road. Gold plating was also of a cheapest variety possible, probably immersion so it wouldn't last long. Newest drives from Seagate also have that construction but pads look like tin plated, no gold. Don't know how long it would last. What we are looking at is an example of a brilliant design with a touch of genius--it DOES last long enough so they work past their warranty period and at the same time it will NOT last enough to make it work very long past the manucturer's warranty. I don't know if it is just greed/incompetence or a deliberate design feature but if it is the latter my kudos to their engineers for job well done :( --- ****************************************************************** * KSI(a)home KOI8 Net < > The impossible we do immediately. * * Las Vegas NV, USA < > Miracles require 24-hour notice. * ******************************************************************
From: Arno on 10 Apr 2010 21:43 In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Sergey Kubushyn <ksi(a)koi8.net> wrote: > In sci.electronics.repair Franc Zabkar <fzabkar(a)iinternode.on.net> wrote: >> On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 14:03:39 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd(a)gmail.com> >> put finger to keyboard and composed: >> >>>On Apr 8, 12:11?am, Franc Zabkar <fzab...(a)iinternode.on.net> wrote: >> >>>> Is this the fallout from RoHS? >>> >>>Maybe not. There are other known culprits, like the drywall (gypsum >>>board, >>>sheetrock... whatever it's called in your region) that outgasses >>>hydrogen >>>sulphide. Some US construction of a few years ago is so bad with >>>this >>>toxic and corrosive gas emission that demolition of nearly-new >>>construction >>>is called for. >>> >>>Corrosion of nearby copper is one of the symptoms of the nasty >>>product. >> >> It's not just Russia that has this problem. The same issue comes up >> frequently at the HDD Guru forums. > I'm right here in the US and I had 3 of 3 WD 1TB drives failed at the same > time in RAID1 thus making the entire array dead. It is not that you can > simply buff that dark stuff off and you're good to go. Drive itself tries to > recover from failures by rewriting service info (remapping etc.) but > connection is unreliable and it trashes the entire disk beyound repair. Then > you have that infamous "click of death"... BTW, it is not just WD; others > are also that bad. It is extremly unlikely for a slow chemical process to achive this level of syncronicity. About as unlikely that it would be fair to call it impossible Your array died from a different cause that would affect all drives simultaneously, such as a power spike. > They had good old gold plated male/female headers on older drives and those > were reliable. Newer drives had, sorry for an expression, "gold plated" pads > and springy contacts from the drive heads. That would have them something > like $0.001 saving per drive wrt those headers and they took that road. Gold > plating was also of a cheapest variety possible, probably immersion so it > wouldn't last long. Newest drives from Seagate also have that construction > but pads look like tin plated, no gold. Don't know how long it would last. Tin lasts pretty long, unless you unplug/replug connectors. That is its primary weakness. > What we are looking at is an example of a brilliant design with a touch of > genius--it DOES last long enough so they work past their warranty period and > at the same time it will NOT last enough to make it work very long past the > manucturer's warranty. I don't know if it is just greed/incompetence or a > deliberate design feature but if it is the latter my kudos to their > engineers for job well done :( I think you are on the wrong trail here. Contact mechanics and chemistry is well understood and has been studied longer than modern electronics. So has metal plating technology in general. Arno > --- > ****************************************************************** > * KSI(a)home KOI8 Net < > The impossible we do immediately. * > * Las Vegas NV, USA < > Miracles require 24-hour notice. * > ****************************************************************** -- Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F ---- Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans
From: Arno on 11 Apr 2010 12:10
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Jeff Liebermann <jeffl(a)cruzio.com> wrote: > On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:11:39 +1000, Franc Zabkar > <fzabkar(a)iinternode.on.net> wrote: [...] > I've NEVER had a > drive failure that was directly attributed to such contact corrosion. > It's usually something else that kills the drive. I think people are jumping to conclusion, because the discolorarion is what they can see (and think they understand). There is a posting in this thread with a person that has had a 3-way RAID1 fail and attributes it to the contact discoloration. Now, whith a slow chemical process, the required level of synchronicity is as unlikely that calling it impossible is fair. >>The thread has >>several detailed photos. All except the older tinned PCB appear to >>show evidence of serious corrosion. >> >>Is this the fallout from RoHS? Surely it's not the result of some cost >>saving measure? > Nope. If the contacts were tin-silver, 5% lead, or one of the other > low lead alloys, the corrosion would probably be white or light gray > in color. The dark black suggests there's at least some lead involved > or possibly dissimilar contact material. Actually pure silver also sulfidizes (?) in this way. The look is very characteristic. I think this is silver plating we see. It is typically not a problem on contacts that are in use, it does not crawl between contact points. I suspect in the observed instances, this is a purely aestetic problem and has no impact on HDD performance or reliability whatsoever. Arno -- Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F ---- Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans |