Hdd controller board
I have a customer that thinks they can simply do a direct swap pcb replacement with another of the same firmware revision, to fix their hdd.
It's a small capacity 3.5" hdd

mrfxit - 2021-07-12 11:05:00

Yes ?
No ?

Depends on what the problem is also ?

nice_lady - 2021-07-12 11:10:00

Burt chip on the board apparently.
Either way it's not running

Oh & been down this road a few times myself before asking the pro's & watching a few video's

mrfxit - 2021-07-12 11:14:00

Not sure how hard it is to do but I do know someone who does component level repairs.

nice_lady - 2021-07-12 11:41:00

from what i know that doesn't work any more. having said that the data recovery companies must use some kind of controller board in this situation

Edited by king1 at 12:56 pm, Mon 12 Jul

king1 - 2021-07-12 12:43:00

Can't hurt to try. Either way it's faulty so you won't make it any worse.

muppet_slayer - 2021-07-12 13:37:00

I think it is usually an internal mechanical problem rather than a problem with the pcb

duncb - 2021-07-12 13:38:00

mrfxit wrote:

Hdd controller board
I have a customer that thinks they can simply do a direct swap pcb replacement with another of the same firmware revision, to fix their hdd.
It's a small capacity 3.5" hdd

If it helps, yes it works, I've done it before, has to be exactly the same revision etc of the board, I did it on a older IDE drive though.

kingfisher21 - 2021-07-12 15:15:00

no you cannot, theres a chip you have to transfer between boards, that maps bad sectors, specific to the platters in each drive.

bitsnpieces2020 - 2021-07-12 17:23:00

https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/swapping-pcb-controller-boards-
seagate-hard-disk-drives/
https://www.datalab247.com/articles/article4.html
https://www.gillware.com/hard-drive-data-recovery/classic-vi
deo-why-control-board-swaps-dont-work-on-most-hard-drives/

Edited by king1 at 6:24 pm, Mon 12 Jul

king1 - 2021-07-12 18:23:00

king1 wrote:

https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/swapping-pcb-contr
oller-boards-seagate-hard-disk-drives/
https://www.datalab247.com/articles/article4.html
https://www.gillware.com/hard-drive-data-recovery/classic-vi
deo-why-control-board-swaps-dont-work-on-most-hard-drives/[/
quote]

Thats pretty much what I had been telling the guy but he insists that he's succeeded many times simply by having the correct firmware revision number to match the original faulty hdd.

mrfxit - 2021-07-12 22:11:00

kingfisher21 wrote:

If it helps, yes it works, I've done it before, has to be exactly the same revision etc of the board, I did it on a older IDE drive though.

The older the generation of hdd, the more possibility of it at least giving you access to the data.
But thats probably several generations older then current models.
40gb type hdd's might be about the limit of a fair but rare chance.
Older hdd's would have more of a chance

mrfxit - 2021-07-12 22:14:00

I've done it, successfully and where I then-worked, other techs also had success. But as stated, the drives had to be absolutely identical, and that was 'some' years ago now. But it worked often enough to make it worth a crack at least.

cookee_nz - 2021-07-12 22:22:00

mrfxit wrote:

Thats pretty much what I had been telling the guy but he insists that he's succeeded many times simply by having the correct firmware revision number to match the original faulty hdd.

who knows, but I would be interested in knowing the model numbers of his successes, maybe it was all one brand/model, maybe 20 years ago, or maybe he has been fortunate to only have only struck the models in the 5% or so that do apparently work... That info above was from data recovery companies so they do have a vested interest as well, maybe the are exaggerating the problem

Edited by king1 at 10:49 pm, Mon 12 Jul

king1 - 2021-07-12 22:48:00

king1 wrote:

who knows, but I would be interested in knowing the model numbers of his successes, maybe it was all one brand/model, maybe 20 years ago, or maybe he has been fortunate to only have only struck the models in the 5% or so that do apparently work... That info above was from data recovery companies so they do have a vested interest as well, maybe the are exaggerating the problem

Those links all say the same things that all the videos I have seen say as well.
Something like a 10% success rate on a very very good day but closer to less then 5% of attempts & thats on the older drives.
It's simply near on impossible with current modern hdd's & ..... well..... ... forget SSD's unless you take them to the pro's

mrfxit - 2021-07-13 07:44:00