Seagate ST31000340AS does not spin. In the attached picture you can see its pcb with a severely burned chip (on the arrow) .
Is that the rom chip ? Can it be replaced by the same chip in an identical pcb?

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated.

Best thing would be to take your drive into a DR company to diagnose it correctly.
There are a lot of them in London for sure.
I can't see by the picture and I don't have here any ST31000340AS on hands, but that might be ROM chip, so you can't just replace it, as it's unique.

That isn't the ROM chip, look diagonally opposite in the bottom right.

Thank you for your reply.

If that is not the rom chip, can it be replaced?

Or is it better to place an identical working pcb and transfer the rom chip (being the one you indicated)?

transfer the rom.. by somebody who can do it properly.
this pcb may have other issues that you wont be able to detect.
good luck

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
Free Solutions
Picasaweb- Pictures and movies | Dropbox - Documents and other..

I can't see the number on the burnt chip, but it's either a MOSFET or a FETKY (MOSFET + Schottky diode). It would be part of a DC-DC converter. Hopefully it is not the supply for the preamp.

The following company sells replacement PCBs for US$40 and provides a ROM transfer service for $10:
http://www.onepcbsolution.com/

To help you identify the components, here are my IC notes:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/HDD_ICs.txt

you'd better swap original ROM chip to good PCB. i have this kind of PCB in stock. please feel free to contact me if need any help.

_________________
data recovery service[/b]

Hey fzabkar- thanks for you IC list - will come in handy for cross refferencing in the future :-]

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
Free Solutions
Picasaweb- Pictures and movies | Dropbox - Documents and other..

indeed. Saved the info myself =) Thx Frank. My usefull notes compilation is growing =)