Help Failed HDD

moji123

moji123

moji123

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9 May 2010
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46
My old Seagate Barracuda 7200 HDD has failed. It's not being recognised by the PC at all. I can see that the PCB has a small dark patch which might be the cause of the problem.
Is it possible to recover the files if I change the PCB, with one with the same reference number, has anyone tried this? Any advice appreciated.
 
I watched some youtube videos on failed HDD repairs months ago saw repairer tested failed HDD found failed chips on PCB and found other same HDD brand and model that was worked. He removed failed PCB and put worked PCB and tested powered on HDD found it was worked with all data on it. He was able to recovered all data from HDD.
 
As others have said it's possible but the hard part would be sourcing the same PCB, if it's old maybe you could pickup a donor drive from an auction.

Like GTS said though if the data is that important you maybe better off sending it to a professional data recover outfit but that won't be cheap.
 
yeah i used to get the pcbs off the auction site
no idea if people still sell the pcbs
since mechanical drives are a lot cheaper now
not really worth the effort if just trying to repair and reuse them
obviously in your case its for data recovery more than reuse

as already said if important you should have multiple backups
though that advice is too late

i used to get ones identical even down to firmware version
if there was one printed on the pcb
at least the barracuda is a popular drive
so you might get lucky
i have a couple laying around somewhere if you want to provide
more information even though the odds of me having what you need
will be pretty remote
 
I've managed to order one from Ebay with the same reference and rev number. Will it be just a case of swapping the board over, I noticed some Youtube guides advise switching over a rom chip which hold some key data. Can it this process work without transferring the rom chip?
 
moji123 said:
I've managed to order one from Ebay with the same reference and rev number. Will it be just a case of swapping the board over, I noticed some Youtube guides advise switching over a rom chip which hold some key data. Can it this process work without transferring the rom chip?
Click to expand...
I hope you didn't spend too much on another PCB - I hate to say it, but there's a decent chance it won't work without swapping over the ROM.

I can't see the model number of the drive, but have you tried searching online to find if other people have had to swap the ROM?
 
darael said:
I hope you didn't spend too much on another PCB - I hate to say it, but there's a decent chance it won't work without swapping over the ROM.

I can't see the model number of the drive, but have you tried searching online to find if other people have had to swap the ROM?
Click to expand...
No it cost just under £10, but looking online it seems you do have to swap the ROM over.

I doubt I'd want to attempt this myself just in case I mess it up.

Looks like I'm going to need professional help for this.
 
moji123 said:
No it cost just under £10, but looking online it seems you do have to swap the ROM over.

I doubt I'd want to attempt this myself just in case I mess it up.

Looks like I'm going to need professional help for this.
Click to expand...
Ask a mobile phone shop if they can do the soldering work for you. Just accept they probably won't have a clue if their work will be successful or not and they are only doing some soldering for you.
 
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moji123 said:
I've managed to order one from Ebay with the same reference and rev number. Will it be just a case of swapping the board over, I noticed some Youtube guides advise switching over a rom chip which hold some key data. Can it this process work without transferring the rom chip?
Click to expand...
It can work but the emphasis is on can, it should go without saying that with the DIY approach you're risking loosing all the data and leaving it in an unrecoverable state, professional data recover services cost so much because they know what works with what model of drive.

Having said that if you did want to risk it I'd start by just swapping the PCB as you may get luck, if you hear any strange noises when you plug it in and it doesn't show up in the BIOS or disk management then you could move onto swapping over the ROM chip but depending on your soldering skills that could be relatively easy or a real struggle (if you're not confident in soldering SMD's then like darael suggested it maybe something a phone repair shop would be willing to do).
 
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moji123 said:
I've managed to order one from Ebay with the same reference and rev number. Will it be just a case of swapping the board over, I noticed some Youtube guides advise switching over a rom chip which hold some key data. Can it this process work without transferring the rom chip?
Click to expand...

Im going to stop you here, if your particular board needs a rom chip swap then I suggest sending it off to a professional company who will have the tools to do this without bricking the chip.

I would even caution against using a matching pcb because some HDDs need boards down to the same batch number for successful swaps.

If the data is important enough to you to spend a couple hundred quid, I would *strongly* suggest reaching out to John at Lazarus Data Recovery.

He managed to save the data of 2 of my drives (they were the same batch and failed on the same day lol) which needed the heads replacing. Not something I would even attempt let alone expect it to work.
 
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@moji123
When you say it's not being recognised by the pc
Is that including looking in disk management
And diskpart
Not just file explorer?
Have you tried it on a different pc?
Can you feel vibration from the drive?
Or hear spinning noise
Would be good to rule out it's not just some windows error
Before doing anything drastic
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
@moji123
When you say it's not being recognised by the pc
Is that including looking in disk management
And diskpart
Not just file explorer?
Have you tried it on a different pc?
Can you feel vibration from the drive?
Or hear spinning noise
Would be good to rule out it's not just some windows error
Before doing anything drastic
Click to expand...
Yes it's not visible at all in disk management and other similar utlities. The drive is completely silent without any vibration or spinning.
I've tried it in a couple of pcs and used a usb connector too.

Murphy said:
It can work but the emphasis is on can, it should go without saying that with the DIY approach you're risking loosing all the data and leaving it in an unrecoverable state, professional data recover services cost so much because they know what works with what model of drive.

Having said that if you did want to risk it I'd start by just swapping the PCB as you may get luck, if you hear any strange noises when you plug it in and it doesn't show up in the BIOS or disk management then you could move onto swapping over the ROM chip but depending on your soldering skills that could be relatively easy or a real struggle (if you're not confident in soldering SMD's then like darael suggested it maybe something a phone repair shop would be willing to do).
Click to expand...
One of the online guides warned that swapping the PCB board without swapping the ROM can risk wiping the drive.
Some of this youtube guides make swapping the rom chip look so easy.

I called around a few phone repairers and one of them is willing to do it, says he's done it before.
 
moji123 said:
One of the online guides warned that swapping the PCB board without swapping the ROM can risk wiping the drive.
Some of this youtube guides make swapping the rom chip look so easy.

I called around a few phone repairers and one of them is willing to do it, says he's done it before.
Click to expand...
Yea, like i said anything short of professional data recovery and you're risking loosing all the data, it really comes down to how important the data is.
 
At least you found one has done it before
Guessing the data is very important
Probably comes down to how much you're willing to pay
Since I assume there's a big price difference
Between the phone repair guy
And professional data recovery company
 
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