Hello, first of all, let me apologize as I think this board is meant for professionals and I am not. I'm just trying to recover some of my father's memories that were on this (surprisingly bad) drive. He is past his 70's and not very inclined towards technology so of course, no recent backup. Unfortunately taking the drive to a data recovery center is out of scope, the drive only contains memories from his deceased parents that he values but can't justify the cost of a data recovery service, as they are not legal documents nor the like.

I've never done any HDD repair before, but as an IT guy I thought I'd give it a shot. I searched a bit how it could be done, and getting a donor and swapping ROM's seemed about right. I bought a PCB with the same rev and took it to a local guy to swap rom's (I struggle to solder two 18awg wires together as I don't have the skills nor the equipment). But of course, this didn't work.

Tried to get more information, and flushing NAND before swaping ROM's looked like the way to go. So I bought a full working drive... and a hot air station. I've been training myself in my little spare time (it is scarce as a father of two 20 month old babies, but anyway) on soldering/desoldering these QFN ROMS with I'd say.... ok results. At least I haven't cooked them and work afterwards.

I was able to access the donor terminal and issue a /O, I command to flush the NAND... and swapped ROM... But of course, this didn't work. And I almost cried. I really thought that would be the ticket... but it wasn't.

Sooo... as stubborn as I am, I've tried to gather some more info, and there are a pair of options that seem plausible, but before going mad on swapping these little ROM's with the risk of damaging them, I thought I'd ask for some kind help if it is possible.

1. Seems like with these (damned) drives the donor needs to be strictly the same firmware. Closest I was able to get was 7 months newer, and firmware is not the same (SM11 vs SM15)
2. There is a thread here that suggests the ROM is cached in the NAND and won't be read from the chip if already there. Suggests to fill up the drive to get the FW out of the cache (I don't know if this means to fill up with >8gb or the whole drive). I am not 100% sure if I reconnected the drive after clearing the donor NAND through terminal. I'd say I didn't but what I really didn't do is filling up the drive before swapping ROM's.

So, is number 1 true? am I locked until I find the exact same FW version? This would mean game over for me, as I don't have the means to source one neither the equipment to read and write ROM chips.

Regarding number 2, is the information on that thread correct? What would be the exact steps in order? Flush NAND from terminal, fill up the drive without disconnecting it so the FW doesn't get cached and replace PCB/ROM chip?

Do you have any other procedure or means I could use to try to repair this drive?

Thank you very much in advance.

i think there is a reason for dr companies charging something for their services.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Before doing any terminal operation on a SEAGATE, it would be wise to have a minimum diagnostic. I don't know why you change PCBs, ROMs, initialize Nand......etc....from the post I can't understand what the initial problem was and the reason for all these processes but the final result I would bet that I can guess.....