I have an older Maxtor hard drive that does not spin up. I suspect the fault to be somewhere in the motor control section. The person that gave it to me for repair has also has an identical functional unit so I can salvage replacement parts.
I checked the 12V rail and found a blown transistor. I also replaced the motor driver and checked the motor windings with the other unit. Now when I plug it in, the motor driver IC gets really hot, but the motor still doesn't spin up.
There's no datasheet for the motor driver IC since apparently it wasn't ever released for the public, only for manufacturers, so I don't know what to check anymore.
I'm hoping I won't have to take a trip to the data recovery specialists, so maybe someone has some idea of what might be faulty.