Michael H.

Thanks for the quick replies! That's a huge mystery then, because I've never had a failed HDD and I never stopped using one because it failed, only stopped using them because of better replacements and so on. - But that's too bad... I guess I could try and fix it some time, but not any time soon and I should probably just go with a drive that's fully intact to waste no efforts.

I have this old HDD, a Seagate something or other, which I'm considering using for an older system. However, upon closer inspection, I quickly noticed a component that seems to be cracked. If you take a look at the picture I've included you'll see it's something near the power-connector. I don't know exactly what it is or how it happened. I've generally been really careful with hardware, so I doubt this happened with impact. It reminds me more of when capacitors go bad, so is it something similar that happens to these components over time? Or does it look more like a case of a power-issue or something? There also seems to be some black staining around it for some reason... Anyway, that's why I'm asking here, as some of you will probably know exactly what that is and how it might have happened. Please let me know what seems to be going on with this and how it might affect the drive, and whether or not it can be used or fixed. I could just hook it up and try it, by the way, but I'm a little worried it might mess up other components, especially since it's near the power-pins. Thanks for reading.