Hi experts

i have the following hard drive:

- Seagate barracuda 7200.11 1tb
- ST31000340AS
- Firmware: sd15
- Series: 7200.11
- P/N: 9bx158-303
- Site code: wuxisg

i'm quite sure i had a short circuit on the PCB after (in my stupidity) i plugged in the hard drive to the computer while it was on!

i then heard some noise and smelled some burned smell.

after that - the computer refused to boot at all while the Hard drive was plugged in.
i then plugged out the hard drive and it boooted succesfuly

i guess the motherboard or the power supply do not respond when the PCB on the hard drive is short circuited

i took the hard drive to a DR company - and they gave me an extremely high quote which i cannot pay

i'm trying to deal with it on the old way - maybe swapping the PCB would fix this issue.

i have tried to search google about swapping PCB's - but there are so many opinions so i need to know for sure some things:

1. would swaping the PCB in my case might solve this issue - and saving my data?
2. if so - what exactly should i be looking for when searching for a matched PCB?
for example: should i be looking for a matched site code, P/N firmware? are they important for the match to be successfull?
3. can you point me to a decent place where i can buy these spare parts?

thanks in advance

roy

Hi, Search the forum for 'TVS' so you understand what their function is and why they might fail. I can see one of yours is 'smoked'.

If you are very very lucky you will soon have easy access to your data.
Don't attempt to remedy the situation if your soldering skills are poor but find a competent techie to do it for you.

Hi, Roy,

If you are looking for PCB, I can help.

Thanks.
Eric

_________________
Provided HDD PCBs and donor HDD, Real in stock
eric_lee8341@hotmail.com

A direct PCB swap on Barracuda 7200.11 series is not possible. The ROM chip has adaptive information on it which must be transferred to the donor drive. Unless you are good a soldering I do not suggest you do this yourself as if you damage the ROM chip all your data will be inaccessible.

Please contact me for further advice.
John

Dr. John C. Reid
Cheadle Data Recovery
Manchester ICT Consultancy
0161 408 4857
Skype: Cheadledatarecovery
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

thanks dick for your response

i am still trying to understannd what is exactly a matched PCB, meaning does P/N and site code should match too?

if i will somehow manage to get a matched PCB would i still have to transfer the ROM chip from the original PCB?

does the original PCB have any unique data stored in it?

Before spending money on a new PCB that may not work for you due to the adaptive info, research TVS on this forum!!! You might get lucky and that could be the only damage on your PCB...

Otherwise, you may have to contact a data recovery firm (not the local computer repair shop) in order to get your data back.

Worth a shot to remove or replace those two damaged TVS.

But attach only to a known GOOD QUALITY power supply, as the protection provided by the TVS's will be gone.

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

hello guys!

thanks alot for your help

pcimage is right!
problem is solved by removing completely one of the TVS's

so clean & simple.
thank you pcimage you have just saved me 500$

thank you all again

Hi ,
Good ,Please Replace a New TVS In That Drive ,Might Be Next Time you Plug it directly It Just Blows The Circuit

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

ya... thanks

i'm just using it as a temporary solutins to extract my data.
so far it worked great

thanks again

Hi, can someone please point out exactly which chip is the rom chip that needs to be transplanted? I can see 2 small 8 pin chips, one smaller than the other, I know it is one of these two, just don't know which...

Thanks
Digital Don

I think its the top right. Chip usually has ST written on it. Why are you swapping the rom? whats seems to be the failure? make sure you diagnose it before attempting anything! And dont lose than ROM!

Swapping the chip is my last resort, first i am going to try the usb/ttl firmware unlock, my drive is a SD81, and it was inside a freeagent that stopped working. I was trying to connect it directly to my laptop hard drive bay (thought i had a better chance to get it working) with some modified cables, and an old power supply from a ide/usb enclosure, however, I stupidly connect the wrong power supply (a dodgy 5 pin Chinese thing) with the polarity reversed and blew one of the diodes, which i have now removed, so potentially I have wrecked the board, one of the chips looks like it may have slightly overheated, slight burn mark on the grey insulator/padding, this is on the opposite side of the board though, so this could easly be the reason it failed in the first place, i dunno yet. The drive does not even spin up, although it didn't do that before i cocked up the power supply. I have swapped the board from a SD15 drive, and the drive now spins up, but nothing else, I have also tried flahing the firmware SD15 board to SD1A whilst attached to the SD81 drive, that worked, but the drive still doesn't show up. I have now put the SD1A flashed board back on the SD15 drive, and it still works, i re-flashed it just to be sure, in case some firmware goes on the platters too.

Oh, I forgot, does anyone know a good soldering iron to buy, mine is a cheap maplin effort (30W), from experience, it doesn't get hot enough to melt the solder on these modern boards, you want to only touch each leg for a few seconds otherwise the chip could go bye bye...

thanks again

to be honest, you don't seem to know what your doing. I would stop there and get professional advice. Is the data important?

Thanks HDD Spaz for your concern, that is a fair assumption based on what I have written so far. I could have handed it to Seagate, but you never know who will be snooping on your data in the lab, for example, if you had naked pictures of your wife on your hard drive, do you think it would be fair on her to send the drive in for repair? No!!!

A week ago I knew very little about hard drives, but I do have a degree in electronics, which admittedly does not help when it comes to solder work, and my day job is all PC based. The reason I swapped the boards and did a flash was because I had read that the firmware on the board has to match the firmware on the platters, so I thought a flash would re-align the two. I have since read that on Seagate drives, the rom chip contains information specific to the drive, I think the read/write head has a code that has to match what is in the rom chip. I am not an expert by any means!!!

I have got my most important data backed up, and I will not be crying myself to sleep every night if I never see this data again, but there are some files on there that I would like to try and retrieve, and to be honest I see this as a bit of a challenge. Maybe one day I will have to do something similar to this again, where the data really is important to me, so you could say this is a practice run.

I have successfully done some solder work before, but I may hand it over to my friend who has done surface mount rework in the past.

I will post my results whichever way it goes, I’m waiting for my usb/ttl converter first, so that I can try the firmware unlocking method. As I said, I may have already killed the board.

Regards
Digital Don

I'm not saying HDD Spaz is wrong, but can anyone else confirm which is the rom chip? top right looks like the smaller chip, looks like a nightmare.

I will get my board under the magnifier when I get home, and maybe google the codes etc.

I've just realised, top right doesn't really help, depends which way up you are holding the board, there are 2 similar chips, uless you are referring to the pic above?, i don't mean to sound like an ungrateful prick...

This maybe of interest to some of you out there with the firmware bricking issue.

http://groups.google.com/group/datareco ... a?hl=en&q=

@digital don,

And do you think we pros have the time and the need to snoop inside data? If you send the drive to a PRO (written in block) the keyword is confidentiality and professionality, if you send it to "Ollie-Will-Fix-It" or to a back-bedroom based "company", maybe things are different.... Anyway, fried disk or not, good luck.

Apologies, but it’s a bit like someone who works in a photo development centre, I know I would look, but that’s just me, sorry. These big companies like Seagate are bound to have some daft young trainee that wouldn’t think twice about copying your data. I’m not trying to put you out of business; I’m the kind of person that wouldn’t send a poor meal back to the kitchen if I was planning to eat it.