Hi all,

I have a DiamondMax 9 Plus SATA here - 6Y160M0, YAR51FW0 KMGD with a SERIAL/CALYPSO PCB (Ardent C8-C1 Controller). The customer himself swapped the PCB against a similar looking one
(SERIAL/CALYPSO/P11/THERM with a C10-C1). I realized it after I attempted to get some data from the drive as it initializes quite well, identifies itself correctly but very, very slow. When I looked at the board, I found that the date code of the Ardent is newer than the manufacturing date of the HDD - I called the customer and he told me that he screwed the PCB onto the drive (any maybe screwed the drive itseld, literally...)
I got the original PCB in, the L7250 is blown and the -5V switcher MOSFET as well. The head amp seems to be ok (as the drive inits even with the wrong PCB mounted). I did some measuring and found traces within the PCB blown (+5V from the Molex socket). Relacing the L7250 did not help, so it seems the Ardent has gone too.

What do your experiences with this model tell you? Try to get the correct PCB?
The orignal one has a serial flash ROM (U200) fitted.

Hello,

If the drive can init with alternative PCB, than it is good enough for one time recovery.
The slowness and instability comes from somewhere else...
Maybe preamp is damaged a little, or heads gets the power spike or similar...
If the pw spike comes when the drive was ON, than some magnetic damage can be in the platter.

Janos

Thanks NC,
that's what I thought when I heard the drive initializing and showing its true ID (not Calypso, but the correct model no and size). I'll try to mirror it sector for sector, probably skipping the first few 100MB as the power supply blew when windows was booting - maybe I'm lucky enough that only a small area is magnetically damaged if your last option comes true.