Looking for Fujitsu 20GB IDE for parts

[Awol]

The hard drive in my sister's computer quit recently. She had most of the pictures of her new baby on the PC, and would like them recovered. I feel guilty, since she had bugged me for months to show her how to use the CD burner. I didn't, and she didn't get the pics backed up.

Hard drive spins, BIOS does not see drive.

I've had good luck recovering from this symptom by installing the controller board from an identical working drive. However, all drives I can find of this same model have a different controller board. (Same connections, but has different chips in different places.)

Please check your piles of old drives for this model. My little sister thanks you!

Fujitsu 20GB 3.5" IDE Drive
Model: "MPG3204AT -E"
Part Number" CA5761-B521000E"
Date: "2001-09"

[tiebird321]

A pic would be helpfull
I have over 2000 HD mainboards sitting around my place
I have a box of Fujitsu stuff from lappys but i need a pic to figure out if i have the right thing

would be glad to help you out on this one

you should also post in the FS/FT forum

also i would try the drive in another lappy or in a USB enclosure

[Awol]

Thanks for your support. I will snap photos of the top and bottom of the drive and post them in this thread.

This drive is a 3.5" desktop drive, not a laptop (2.5") drive.

[draksia]

I might actually have one for I will check when I get home.

[Vertigo Acid]

E-bay would be my suggestion; I personally know that I've sold one of these and two of the 10gb models before for parts there, and they seem to be fairly common

[draksia]

I looked and the model I have is a MPG3204AH not the MPG3204AT.

I am not sure what the difference but I will see I can find out.

edit: Well the differences are that the AH seies is a 7200rpm and the AT series is 5400rpm. I could have sworn that the drive I have was 5400 rpm when I bought it. I am pretty sure it will not work even though it looks like fujitsu used the same platters in each drive.

[Awol]

Pics added.

[Awol]

TtT

[Awol]

ARGH!!!

I just found out this model of drive was part of a class-action lawsuit against Fujitsu, Gateway, and HP. Evidently, due to a defective component sourced by Fujitsu, many of them failed. The settlement included a replacement drive and even REIMBURSEMENT OF DATA RECOVERY FEES! But, the deadline to take part was November 2004....

If I had known this drive was the subject of a lawsuit, I would never have installed it in my sister's computer in the first place!

I placed a call to Fujitsu, and asked if they'd be able to help me out even though I'm outside of the warranty and settlement periods. A replacement drive won't recover the data, but is better than nothing. We'll see...

Awol

[Josh_B]

Those drives are crap and were defective from the start.

I have returned about 100 of them to Fujitsu from my place of work, and at least three from me personally.