PCB replacement

[hddrepair]

Hi

Just a few technical tips for PCB replacement on HDD.

This procedure was a good quick fix for many HDD a few years back, however recent almost exponential growth in the capacities of this media mean that the design and structure has changed significantly.

All modern hard drives are 'hypertuned' at the manufacturing plant, this information is stored on the PCB, so in changing this you are introducing data from another hard drive.

Another very important issue is the firmware revision.

In rare circumstances PCB changes can really compound your recovery or yield it unrecoverable.

More info to follow later.

 

[Freestone]

Useful information, for sure. I also suggest crossposting to forum751 for a wider audience for your tips, and using the Helpful Tip icon (lightbulb) to further draw attention.

 

[DataRec]

You're right about "hypertuned" We call it adaptive information that is specific to that head disk assembly.
Some newer drives such as Hitachi Travelstars have the PCB coded to the head disk assembly. If you swap it to another drive, it will not work. Worse, it won't work when you put it back to the other donor drive anymore either.
You need a tool like PC-3000 that can copy the coded firmware from one PCB to another to make it work.