Hard drive PCB for data recovery

[uberplasma]

Hi everyone

I have a seagate ST9250410AS with a bad controller, according to seagate support and the diagnostics they gave to run and the error codes generated the platters are fine as is the data, just a bad PCB, they can recover the data for $ 1200, which i don't have. So i found a PCB with same firmware except it is from a 5400 rpm hard drive, where as mine is a 7200. Are they compatable, for at least long enough to pull my data?
Cheers

[ratdude747]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

probably not.

[uberplasma]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

thx
thought so
cheers

[Per Hansson]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

Hi, well you can try but don't get your hopes up.
You must have a PCB matching as well as possible, even firmware
(Don't use a PCB not made for your drive, especially one made for a different motor, they use different current and maybe even voltages!)
Here is a data recovery request I sent after trying to swap PCB with one bought on eBay myself a few years ago

MANUFACTURER: HTS421280H9AT00
CAPACITY: 80

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:
The drive is identified on startup by the BIOS as HTC4"1"8 H)AD0
Once inside Windows the size of the drive is recognized (80GB) and the partitions
But they can not be read, I tried to recover data using RunTimeSoftware GetDataBack NTFS
It was able to read the metadata and list all files, but they where all corrupt when I tried reading them after recovery

PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS:
A donor PCB was bought, exactly matching MLC number (DA1303)
And also matching the first two rows of numbers on the PCB sticker (0A26790, DA1187B)

On first test drive was not found at all, so I desoldered the eeprom from the original PCB and put it on the new one
The drive was now identified as before; HTC4"1"8 H)AD0 and filesystem was unreadable from Windows as before

Next I swapped over the flash memory IC aswell, but there was no change

[shovenose]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

I doubt the 5400RPM and 7200RPM are compatible, because they motors are different.

[retiredcaps]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

I have a seagate ST9250410AS with a bad controller

I suggest you look on ebay and try to get an exact match. One ebay auction says

"This model PCB board has a memory chip which holding the unique Hard Drive configuration info. We need to copy this memory chip info to the new board."

[kc8adu]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

i can look in my pile.
i save drives just for this kind of work.
you will need to swap the eeprom from the old board on these.

[uberplasma]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

Hi
so unless i lay out the $ 15k for the recovery hardware(sold a few kilometers away) or $ 1200 for seagate to do it the data is probably lost.
I did find a matching hard drive speed , model, part # and firmware, only difference is serial number, should i even bother buying it. Even a slight chance at recovering the data(childrens pics) is better than nothing. seagate sent me a replacement drive, so i can't be desoldering eeproms unless I am very careful and do it so they don't detect it.
thx

[retiredcaps]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

I did find a matching hard drive speed , model, part # and firmware, only difference is serial number, should i even bother buying it.

I found Scott Moulton's videos especially part 1 - 7 on hard drive recovery to be valuable. I haven't watched his other stuff yet, but they all look interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperFly.../videos?view=0

He also explains the serial number part at

[smason]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx-D1...824295&index=1

At about 6 minutes in, Scott talks about boards and firmware and dates.
He says if the board manufacture date is different from the drive by as little as 2 weeks, you could be in trouble.

[capsasdf]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

Some older drives have the same basic information on two PCB boards of the same model, provided that both drives were made at about the same time, before more unique adaptives were programmed into the next line of drives. If one of the PCBs fails, there is some chance of making a recovery by simply swapping the boards of the two drives. However, hard drives have contained "customized" firmware on at least an occasional basis since they've become a consumer product, so the chances of a straight "board swap" working are low. So in most cases you also need to move the old PCB's BIOS to the replacement one.

Check this article: http://www.hddzone.com/fix_hard_drive_pcb_board.html

[Uniballer]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

I had an old Antec power supply fail in a computer at my workplace. It took out everything directly connected to the power supply (hard disk, DVD drive, motherboard, case fan), but the CPU and RAM were OK. I bought a Seasonic power supply, similar motherboard, hard disk, etc to get the system running again.

I wasn't sure if there was anything valuable on the hard disk. I pulled the PCB from the drive (Seagate ST3500413AS) and there were a bunch of scorched components and traces near the power connector. I couldn't figure out how I was going to even identify them, let alone replace them. So I found a PCB on ebay (Seagate 100535704 rev C) on ebay ($20 best offer, free shipping). I first tried the new board as is and it spun up the drive but it wasn't recognized by the BIOS. I transferred the EEPROM (25FU406B - 8 pin SOIC - upper left corner in the image) from the old board to the new one and the disk now works just fine. I guess I kinda wasted my time though because there were no files of any value on the drive that hadn't already been backed up.

Now here is the question: Would you trust the repaired hard drive in an active role? Or is it now damaged goods? How would you test it to qualify it? Thanks for your opinions.

[Uniballer]

Re: Hard drive PCB for data recovery

I erased and scanned the disk with MHDD V4.6 and didn't find any problems. All of the SMART tests pass. I installed a UNIX operating system on it and beat the hell out of the disk for a while. No problems that I can see. I guess I'll beat the hell out of it for another week and call it good if it is OK. I just wish there was a stand-alone disk exerciser the way MEMTEST86+ is for RAM.