# HDD PCB Replacement



## Guitar (Jul 7, 2016)

Long story short I fried all the hard drives in my system a few weeks back. 

I ordered new PCBs for them, with the hopes that I could swap them out and they would work. I ordered new PCBs for the drives, swapped them, and no dice. While the drives spin up, they are not being recognized by the computer. I read that the BIOS chips need to be swapped, so I had a friend try and swap them. Since two of the drives were small 8 pin chips he was able to do those no problem. The third HDD is a main controller chip that contains the data and apparently requires a special soldering station to do it after doing some research, so he wasn't able to get that one off.

Unfortunately, replacing the BIOS chips of the first two HDDs still don't seem to allow the drives to be recognized. I'm REALLY just worried about the HDD that has the information within the main chip, but would like to recover all if possible.

This is how the drives show up in Windows - the WD Green. The black gets 'recognized' then spins down after clicking a few times...the Samsung spins up but never gets recognized.







Questions: has anybody succeeded doing this or know of a company that can attempt this? I looked up online and saw the main solution people go to are "donor drives" which seem to be one of those bait and switch, come in for cheap prices, come out with paying for $2k professional data recovery which doesn't seem to be what these drives need from research.

Any input appreciated.

Drive models:
Samsung HD501LJ
Western Digital WD1002FAEX
Western Digital WD20EARS

Boards ordered:
WD 2060-771698-002 PCB
WD 2060-771702-001 PCB
SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00133A


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## Hellraiser1981 (Jul 7, 2016)

The drive characteisistics are stored in the config chip(bios).  If it is that important try to fix or freeze the OEM boards to get your data back.  The very first sectors store the config and bad sectors.  I would consider the data lost.  Not a recovery guy,so I would low level format and see if it works. (Data gone) A new controller PCB won't mesh with the stored data.  You may be able to transplant the PSU circuitry from the new to the old board.  Best of luck!!


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## Toothless (Jul 7, 2016)

Dats some gud storage space m8.

Best of luck, hope you get your data back.


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## AsRock (Jul 7, 2016)

Swaping boards out on old WD 850MB drives used to work, about 2 year ago i had a 6 WD 250GB drives which of 3 failed and changing boards would only make problems with no way of getting the data from the failed drives.

So these days i guess even if the same version \ revision and all that the boards seem to check with a chip within the drive too.


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## Jetster (Jul 7, 2016)

its about 50/50 for the ones ive tried. I keep failed drives for this reason. TO try the board on drives that have issues. I've saved maybe 4 by switching boards


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## Assimilator (Jul 7, 2016)

If the data is really that important, stop mucking around and take the drives *and their original PCBs* to a professional data recovery company. Yes, you will pay a lot of money and perhaps get nothing back, but again, if the data is worth it to you then it's worth it.

If you insist on trying with the PCB only, then bear in mind that you may very well have hosed the data on both drives by trying to boot them with incompatible PCBs. Furthermore it's entirely possible that the electrical surge has fried more than just the PCBs - the motors of the read heads could be damaged, for example - in which case even a successful PCB replacement won't help. But if you still want to take this route, there are various sites e.g. www.hdd-parts.com that will allow you to ship the faulty PCB to them, they will then (from my understanding) move all the chips from the faulty PCB to a donor PCB and send the donor PCB back to you.


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## Ferrum Master (Jul 7, 2016)

You need to swap the EEPROM IC also...


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## laszlo (Jul 7, 2016)

as i see from picture drives are recognized but not initialized

unallocated message can be due mbr corruption ....

there are a lot of free software which can recover data from raw/ formatted drive; even windows has a recovery option (i didn't use it yet...)

further depend on you if you dare to try yourself to recover ....

how to initialize drive:









free recovery softs...http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm

and added this ...http://lifehacker.com/5982339/diy-data-recovery-tricks-for-when-your-hard-drive-goes-belly-up


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## natr0n (Jul 7, 2016)

I have swapped logic boards many times you need identical drives though.

These days there are many revisions of drives so might be tough.


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## AsRock (Jul 7, 2016)

laszlo said:


> as i see from picture drives are recognized but not initialized
> 
> unallocated message can be due mbr corruption ....
> 
> ...



It's what mine did and they would not internalize, flashing the drives would not work either.

To late for mine now although i could not help thinking there was some way to do it but started to think that the manufacture would have to  do it with having the tools and all.

There are sites out there that claim you can just swap boards and actually sell the boards too, so maybe some drives you can do it.  Still think you need the right software to re-flash the replacement board to make it work with the rest of the drive and the tools of WD would not do this and seemed that it needed to be programmed to work with the rest of the drive.




natr0n said:


> I have swapped logic boards many times you need identical drives though.
> 
> These days there are many revisions of drives so might be tough.



I had 6 in all and 4 failed all the same and none would do it and all the same drives and revisions. I guess you got to be real lucky.


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## qubit (Jul 7, 2016)

Assimilator said:


> If the data is really that important, stop mucking around and take the drives *and their original PCBs* to a professional data recovery company. Yes, you will pay a lot of money and perhaps get nothing back, but again, if the data is worth it to you then it's worth it.
> 
> If you insist on trying with the PCB only, then bear in mind that you may very well have hosed the data on both drives by trying to boot them with incompatible PCBs. Furthermore it's entirely possible that the electrical surge has fried more than just the PCBs - the motors of the read heads could be damaged, for example - in which case even a successful PCB replacement won't help. But if you still want to take this route, there are various sites e.g. www.hdd-parts.com that will allow you to ship the faulty PCB to them, they will then (from my understanding) move all the chips from the faulty PCB to a donor PCB and send the donor PCB back to you.


Yes indeed. Looks to me like the OP is on a hiding to nothing. Best take the drives to a data recovery company. Of course, the big question is why was he running without backups. A situation like this is then guaranteed to happen.


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## Guitar (Jul 7, 2016)

Assimilator said:


> If the data is really that important, stop mucking around and take the drives *and their original PCBs* to a professional data recovery company. Yes, you will pay a lot of money and perhaps get nothing back, but again, if the data is worth it to you then it's worth it.


If the data was worth spending that money then I wouldn't be trying this stuff. I know what I am getting into. I have any data that I actually need backed up. There's some files on the Samsung drive that would be "nice to have" but not necessary if I couldn't get them back relatively easily/inexpensively. 

Thanks for the posts, I knew the PCBs were a 50/50 chance but figured I'd try. I may send the one drive off to hdd-parts as I can stomach $280 if they could get the data back but otherwise not that worried about it. I will send them an email and probably keep mucking with the other two drives.


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## qubit (Jul 7, 2016)

Guitar said:


> may send the one drive off to hdd-parts as I can stomach $280 if they could get the data back but otherwise not that worried about it.


$280 is a lot of money. If you're willing to spend that, then you should definitely have had a backup.

I suggest using Karen's Replicator since it's free and simple and a very effective backup tool.


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## Guitar (Jul 7, 2016)

qubit said:


> $280 is a lot of money. If you're willing to spend that, then you should definitely have had a backup.
> 
> I suggest using Karen's Replicator since it's free and simple and a very effective backup tool.



Maybe to some...$280 is not that much, and a lot different than $2k.


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