*discliamer* I have no idea what the little coil is for. *disclaimer*

Perhaps its possible to build new housing for the little coil with glue if the coil is still instact, otherwise im sure someone else here will tell you not to try it. 😀

I had a fair notion by what came out of it, but I wanted to double check. The part I have highlighted is an inductor. Is that the same location of your broken component?

Yep that's it!

Kk. The inductor was originally air core? if it is and the coil isn't malformed, you should be able to test it's inductance and resistance to choose a replacement.

'608' is probably the inductor's value in uH (micro henries).

That's what I thought initially, and it may well be in this case, but I have found some examples where the markings are a series designator.

Since it is only a coil and chances are good that the drive will still work provided the windings are still intact.

The combination of an inductor (I'm pretty sure that is not an air-core therefore) with the capacitors and a power-MOSFET around it looks like its for some DC/DC-converter.
If you can find and identyfy a DC/DC controller then the datasheet should give a hint about the needed inductivity (usually they don't give a certain value, but a formula to estimate the needed inductance).

Or I guess there is an easier way: There are two presumably identical inductors on the other side of the board. I guess they'll have used identical parts for other power supplies).
If I'm correct they are marked "100", for which my guess would be 1µH or 10µH.

Edit: Just realized that its different inductors on a photo of another drive with the coils still intact.
Guess you're right with 6.8µH
Still strange that the broken inductor seems to have that blue ring on the cover like the ones marked "100" on the other photo.

nforce4max wrote:

Since it is only a coil and chances are good that the drive will still work provided the windings are still intact.

The core seems not so intact. The inductance and behaviour (saturation) of the coil are greatly affected by it.

Taking the core out might result in much less inductance - in turn leading to huge current switching transients that might damage the output capacitor and/or power Mosfet.

It's probably worth a try, but if you are seriously interested in repairing the HDD or need to restore data from it, then I'd not recommend that. It needs some work but still seems repairable.

Yeah I see the little components with black or blue tops depending on what screenshots I find online.

I think I'll have a go at repairing it ... no idea what's on it, nothing important I'm fairly certain. I haven't used it in years but I'd love to try it out again and it'd be a shame to leave it broken so I'll have a go at repairing it.

Thanks everyone 😀