Question for the PCB gurus

[eaglescout526]

My question is, does this look like a capacitor failure?

 

 

Judging from pics I have seen of this board on the internet, it looks like a failure of some kind and it’s preventing my hard drive from being read. I ordered a donor board but I just want a second opinion. 

[Minuit]

I don't see any source for electrolyte to have come from. There are capacitors there, but they all look like ceramic caps which do not leak and fail very rarely in general.

 

That does, however, look very much like the brown corrosive death glue that various manufacturers love to use. Check that brown crap for conductivity too, as it could also be shorting the board out.

 

Can you get a closer pic of the area around the top connector with the ceramic capacitor and 0 ohm "resistors"? It almost looks like there's damage to the board there.

 

Is there anything around this board in the hard drive that could be overheating it, or any possibility that a small amount of liquid has spilled on it? Anyone who's watched a Louis Rossmann video can tell you it really doesn't take much.

[eaglescout526]

11 minutes ago, Minuit said:

I don't see any source for electrolyte to have come from. There are capacitors there, but they all look like ceramic caps which do not leak and fail very rarely in general.

 

14 minutes ago, Minuit said:

That does, however, look very much like the brown corrosive death glue that various manufacturers love to use. Check that brown crap for conductivity too, as it could also be shorting the board out.

 

That was my first thing I thought too. I saw that and thought it was some sort of adhesive that got really warm and got runny, I will have to test it for conductivity though. The only thing that makes sense to have any adhesive is the control chip to hard drive case as a heat sink but there’s nothing around the main chip that’s if similar color or substance. 

 

13 minutes ago, Minuit said:

Can you get a closer pic of the area around the top connector with the ceramic capacitor and 0 ohm "resistors"? It almost looks like there's damage to the board there.

Yeah I can snap one here in a minute for ya.
 

 

13 minutes ago, Minuit said:

Is there anything around this board in the hard drive that could be overheating it, or any possibility that a small amount of liquid has spilled on it?

 
Nothin has spilled as it sits in a tower case and being in AZ, it’s too damn dry haha.  And it does sit on top of a hard drive bay with three other drives. Two of which don’t get power.