Hard drive PCB swap success?

[RickPaulos]

Has anyone successfully changed pcbs on a hard drive?

I define success as being able to access files on the disk.

I've read a number of posts suggesting this approach.
But I haven't found any one who claims to have done this and have it work.

I suppose there is a partial success in saving the drive but not the data. That is being able to reuse the drive after a format.

http://www.databe.com/pcb.html

says it won't work on certian brands, then they list nearly every brand. Sheesh. Maybe they are just trying to get more business for their recovery service.

I heard back from Drivesavers.com and they said 'you could possibly succeed by replacing the PCB. The revision usually needs to be identical, ...'.

Thanks,
Rick

 

[edfair]

Several have reported success but more have reported failure. So it is a mixed bag.
One success was reported back here last week. You could try a search on my handle for the last 7 days and I suspect it will pop up.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[paparazi]

It is a mixed bag! it all depends on what the original hard drive fault was. If for instance the failure occured due to the click of death then swopping out the PCB is extremely unlikely to make any differance but on the otherhand if your HDD has just suddenly stopped being detected you have a very good chance indeed.
In otherwords faults associated with the PCB's and controllers rather than mechanical failure have a high probabitity of being fixed by a PCB swop out.
Martin


Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[dbData]

Information specifically addressing your question is available at

http://www.howtorecoverdata.com.

The information details what to look for when swapping PCB's.

 

[jurgen36]

Yes many years ago I did swap PC bords on hard drives. The drives came all from the same company and had identical Rom types. However the success was a mixed bag. I could recover about 40% of the data. Today I am using data recovery software. This works much better and usally recovers about 80 to 85% of the data. As long as the drives still spin up the sucess is almost guaranteed. If the drive does not spin up then you are in the black hole. Good luck.

Jurgen

 

[etiger]

as said before it is a mix.
If you know for sure that the pcb is defect, you can replace it and still read your data. If the platters or head and arms are defect or you have a scratch on the platter you will have trouble recovering your data!

I did it in past and I agree with the numbers of jurgen36.

Like they said in the past: save many, safe often (If you had a zx81 with 16 kB ram extension pack you know....)

Etienne

 

[zeitghost]

Ah, the ZX81 with a wobbly ram pack.

Deep joy.

rgds
Zeit.

 

[RickPaulos]

Woo Hoo. SUCCESS!!!

yes I did it. The drive in question had a bad chip on the pcb. I could see a slight burn on 1 chip. I bought a used drive of the same brand, line, size, model & version. Swapped pcbs, put the drive in my computer and was able to copy ALL the files. I did get 2 errors about duplicate 8.3 file names in the internet explorer cache folder. Both were empty folders so that didn't matter.

I did notice there were some different numbers on all the chips on the pcb. I'm assuming they were date codes of some sort.

 

[satrow]

With the Fujitsu MPxx 10-30Gb series, I have had success on several occasions. Also with Seagate 10,000rpm SCSI.
As has been stated before, if the issue is not PCB, it won't fix it.

Andy.

 

[satrow]

***I suppose there is a partial success in saving the drive but not the data. That is being able to reuse the drive after a format.***

In each case (4), I was able to access and save all the data.

The drives were reusable, formatted or not.

I would not use my 'good' Fujitsu PCB, except to recover data (a 'good' Fujitsu PCB from that era is as rare as hens teeth; you risk it dying each time you use it).

Andy.