Hi. I'm really hoping this is a simple fix. My 2.5 toshiba mk4025gas hdd stopped working. I put a new donor pcb on the drive and it was struggling to spin making a bzz bzz sound which I found out it had seized inside. Because of this I think it might of burned out the spindle driver on the original pcb which is why the original pcb doesn't work at all. I had a professional swap the platters in a donor drive which they confirmed it was seized inside and couldn't spin properly. When I put the original pcb on the drive nothing happened, when I put the donor pcb on the drive it spun but was making a clicking noise like the heads couldn't seek. Did some research to find out the 8 pin rom/bios chip needed swapping, so I had a professional swap the chips on both boards. Now when I try both pcbs they both don't work? I brought a new pcb very similar to the original and it spins the drive but the heads cant seek the data to read it like before I had the rom chips swapped? Is there something else that needs to be swapped with the 8pin rom chip or something else? Also I've been using windows to boot this drive, will linux make a difference as I have a system rescue CD which I was hoping to clone the drive as soon as it worked using ddrescue. Thank you very much for taking your time to read and help me with this issue, I can't tell you how much I'd appreciate the help.

I have to question the "professional" you are using, as most would know to advise you that you are probably wasting your money following the path you have, thus far.

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Luke
SSD Data Recovery

Reason being? Which part of the path was a waste as that little bit of information could be useful in fixing the problem I have or change it to a new problem I have? The platter swap was required for the problem it had, unless you think not? The chip swap cost nothing and is easily reversible. I just need help in getting the pcb to work to read the data and I can do all the recovering of the files myself? The drive works but the pcb doesn't and I'm sure there is plenty of great people in this forum with a great expertise with pcbs to solve this issue without sending it off again to waste even more money as that's something I can't afford apart from swapping any chips I can easily get help with. I just need help in getting the pcb to work to read the data please.

If the "ROM" doesn't work with your donor PCBs, then maybe it is dead? Did/can your friend dump its contents?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I have only tried swapping the rom with the donor drives pcb and no other pcb and both rooms had a different double digit number on them. The heads wasnt swapped also, only the platter itself. I had a suspicion that the problem I have now was the rom being dead but was hoping otherwise and still am. Was hoping it was something easier to fix like I didn't match the donor pcb correctly or the CPU/main controller IC needed swapping as well, or even both. The person who did the platter swap only works on the drive itself and not the pcb. Luckily this is a single platter with a straightforward swap which is why I got it done so cheap. The rom chip swap that took place was at a local phone repair shop, I will get in touch with them to see if they can do it. Is this something i could possibly do myself? I know this Toshiba drive has unique data on the rom to access the drives data. If the rom is dead can you still copy it to another?

If the ROM is dead, its data is inaccessible.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Yeah unfortunately I know that but there is a few possibilities of that not being the case which will all depend on the answers given to the questions below.

Just a few questions I need to know which I can't find anywhere and maybe very helpful to someone now or in the future.

1. Because I used a donor drive with the same model number, apart from one letter, I didn't match the pcb that came with it as It was just for a platter swap. The donor pcb has a different firmware code and a different pcb revision code to the original pcb which the chips was swapped from. The question is: would this make any difference when swapping the bios/firmware chip? Would a chip swap between any pcb for mk4025gas work?

2. If the donor pcb wasnt correct for my firmware chip then maybe I should try swapping the chips back and replacing the fuse on the original pcb to see if that is a reason why the main pcb isn't working.

3. Could there be a possibility of getting an extract same pcb to the original one with the same adaptive data to read the platters or is every single chip different for this model of drive? It's around 10years old now this drive so I'm unsure how they made them that long a go.

4. Lastly, is there any way of getting the correct firmware information from anywhere to copy to another chip to read that data if the chip is damaged?

Thanks for all your help. Much appreciated

Well the "professional" that transferred to the new flash chip sounds like he didn't transfer it properly. Either it wasn't a bit perfect transfer, or they physically damaged one or both of the chips in the process.

Did they dump the chip first to have a backup/reference copy on hand? If there's any chance of this working, you need that chip's contents. Why did someone say it needed to be changed?

Honestly, this sounds like an SMD fuse was blown on the original PCB, perhaps from overheating, causing expansion, which can make the drive seize up, spindle burn out, etc. before the PCB fuse blows. The fact that a donor was making it whir at the beginning makes me think this could be the problem. This problem happens often on 2.5" drives that are in laptops, and the laptop is used heavily on a plush blanket or carpet, thermally cooking it.

But with all the stuff you've had done to the drive by this point, who knows what other mistakes or mishaps have happened along the way. I would get the dumped .bin of the flash chip that the guy should have taken before doing a swap.

Unless of coirse the chip was fried before he did anything on it, but I'm reluctant to think that was the case. Flash chips are pretty resilient, and there's a path of circuitry before it that would give out before it could.