Could use some help... Fujitsu MHV2120BH won't power on...

[legend1011]

Hello,

I'm hoping to have some success repairing a Hard Drive to recover data. The hard drive hasn't been backed up for a few months so this isn't a Severe case scenario. The amount of data that has been added the past few months is limited, but this is a worthwhile project to try and attempt to restore it. At the moment, the hard drive will not power up! Silence, nothing! I tried connecting to 3 different sata power sources with the same result.

The laptop hard drive is out of a Lenovo laptop. The numbers on the hard drive are as follows:

FUJITSU
MADE IN THAILAND
MODEL: MHV2120BH PL
ID: YTRN
PART NO: CA06672-B216000L
SER. NO: NW9ST7428V56
DATE: 2007-04-17

REV. NO: A (0 AND 1 with doublestrike) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0BCB1B-0084002A

I have read that swapping the PCB board might be a good first attempt, so I purchased the following PCB board off of Ebay. (note: I have highlighted identical values in blue)

DISK DRIVE: MHV2120BH PL
PART NO: CA06672-B216000L
SER NO: NW9ST7126F2N
DATE: 2007-01
LBA: 234441648
CAP: 120GB
SATA
REV.NO: A (DOUBLE LINE THROUGH 0) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0BCBEC-00840029
Board number on label: VBT6ZS8B17 (appears to be a serial number of some sort)
Board number on PCB (T): CA26338-B74104BA
Controller chip: 88i6735-BAN1

I'm currently awaiting the PCB to shipped to my house for the swap. After searching this forum, it appears that it's wishful thinking to try and do a simple swap. I'm curious what my options are at this point. I'm not a Hard Drive professional, but I'm somewhat technical so I may be able to try and repair parts on the defective board with the new one. Any tips or suggestions? I would like to budget up to $100 bucks for this project. I currently have about $30 on the new board. I just need to get this drive turned on one last time to do a data extract!

I appreciate any info. Thanks alot!

Attachments

Here is a pic of the defective PCB board

[legend1011]

Damn It!...

After searching the forum for over an hour, i tried testing my "fuse" with a multimeter and sure enough it was short. I bypassed the fuse and my Hard Drive powered up! =D. I quickly attached it to my desktop to try and copy over data and I noticed it was terribly slow!!!!

I felt the hard drive and it was burning hot! I quickly powered down and let it cool off. Went ahead it hooked back up and it started smoking ...

Opened it up and it appears this chip is burnt!... I highlighted the burnt chip in the pic below... This sucks!... what now?...

Attachments

[fzabkar]

The nearby 4R7 coil would suggest that the circled component is a MOSFET in a switchmode regulator. There is a similar regulator at the bottom of the board.

I would expect that one regulator provides the Vio supply (+3.3V or +2.5V) for the MCU, SDRAM, and flash memory.

The other regulator would provide the Vcore supply (~1.2V ?) for the MCU.

The chip located at 4 o'clock to your circled component looks like it may be a serial flash memory. If so, then you may need to transfer it to your donor PCB. Could you tell us its markings?

[BlackST]

The idea about "bypassing" the fuse was yours or did you read it "somewhere" ?
If things are fitted, there's a reason for it, and usually on equipment there's a warning about fuses : "REPLACE WITH SAME TYPE AND RATING" and this was no exception - hard wire or solder blob is not exactly a replacement.

This sucks!... what now?...

Toasted PCB and maybe something else on HDA, maybe add some other problem due to the ... "abnormal" shutdown

[dick]

i tried testing my "fuse" with a multimeter and sure enough it was short. I bypassed the fuse and my Hard Drive powered up!

I don't understand this. A functional fuse should show zero ohms or continuity! So what and how did you bypass before powering on?

[BlackST]

Here's the answer.

After searching the forum for over an hour ....

[legend1011]

The idea about "bypassing" the fuse was yours or did you read it "somewhere" ?
If things are fitted, there's a reason for it, and usually on equipment there's a warning about fuses : "REPLACE WITH SAME TYPE AND RATING" and this was no exception - hard wire or solder blob is not exactly a replacement.

This sucks!... what now?...

Toasted PCB and maybe something else on HDA, maybe add some other problem due to the ... "abnormal" shutdown

I actually read it in a thread on this forum...
http://forum.hddguru.com/wanted-pcb-for-fujitsu-mht2030at-t12154.html

I took the advice from another forum member (PMIMAGE?). I assumed it was credible since it was also another Fujitsu drive. the advise was obviously poor... my mistake

Okay, so I guess I'll await my donor board. How important is Firmware version? I believe my Donor board's firmware is a bit off...

Also, these IC's are too small for me to work on with my soldering iron I'm afraid. How much would it cost to get the ROM removed from the patient to the donor board? any special tools recommended for this job? Thanks

[BlackST]

You still don't know if the rest is in working order... ROM (?!?) included.

About the "special tools" ... yes there are, but they are far beyond your budget , I'm afraid.

In any case - forgiving any other problem as you can't tell NOW, you have 1) to get a suitable replacement PCB 2) make it work with YOUR drive.
The outcome may be good or it will end in another fried PCB and a lot of frustration.

It's only you knowing if it is worth the risk or not.

[legend1011]

Fair enough, but I'm curious if I should look into replacing anything else on my laptop before putting another hard drive in there. The following events happened:

1) I encrypted my drive using TrueCrypt a month ago. (Standard AES encryption)
2) I dropped the laptop off of my bed a month later! It hit the floor hard!
3) I had a Windows corrupt registry problem the next couple days after it dropped. I freaked out and started "decrypting".
4) The decrypt ran for over a day! I noticed the HD and computer got kind of hot from this slow decrypting process
5) The hard drive was able to boot into windows after the decryption process finished
6) I ran a "CHKDSK /F" in Windows
7) The drive never booted back up after the CHKDSK scan.

I'm a little weary of buying a new HD to put it in the laptop. I'm wondering if the laptop PSU or motherboard contributed to the death of the drive? Perhaps the wear and tear from the TrueCrypt software as well? Theories?

[BlackST]

Theory ? No, Practice.

Quote :

2) I dropped the laptop off of my bed a month later! It hit the floor hard!

[fzabkar]

I actually read it in a thread on this forum...
http://forum.hddguru.com/wanted-pcb-for-fujitsu-mht2030at-t12154.html

I took the advice from another forum member (PMIMAGE?). I assumed it was credible since it was also another Fujitsu drive. the advise was obviously poor... my mistake :lol:

I believe that would be "pcimage". AIUI, he's a data recovery professional. :-)

Okay, so I guess I'll await my donor board. How important is Firmware version? I believe my Donor board's firmware is a bit off...

Also, these IC's are too small for me to work on with my soldering iron I'm afraid. How much would it cost to get the ROM removed from the patient to the donor board? any special tools recommended for this job? Thanks

AIUI, when you transfer the "ROM", then you will be transferring the firmware as well. As for the required tools and skill, your local TV/AV repair shop should have both. I can't imagine that it would cost you more than about US$20. Otherwise, I know that a least one board supplier (http://www.onepcbsolution.com) has transferred ROMs for people who have bought PCBs from other sources. He normally charges $10 for those boards that he supplies, otherwise his price is $20.

[legend1011]

Okay. I still have the desire to get to this data. It has become a challenge Is it completely unheard of just to do a PCB swap and have it work right out of the box? I guess I'm bummed that I have to try to swap the chip out from the donor board to the patient to try and make this work. I definitely don't have any faith with my "surgeon hand" . I guess I'll have to shop around for a Electronic tech who can do this... Is this a standard thing that any TV Electronic tech can and should be able to do? Or will be I be trying to locate the Michael Jordan of Electronic Soldering? I guess I'm just a little nervous turning this job over to someone since it's a 1-shot deal.

[fzabkar]

It should be a slam dunk. However, there are people in the data recovery profession who outsource their soldering work, and I've also seen computer technicians who use a soldering iron like a weapon.

Find a junior TV tech with good eyesight and steady hands, or send it away to the board supplier I suggested. I doubt that any DR pro will do the job within your stated budget.

I can't answer your question about the chances of a direct PCB swap working without a ROM transfer, though.

[thatdellguy]

However, there are people in the data recovery profession who outsource their soldering work, and I've also seen computer technicians who use a soldering iron like a weapon.

This is Mr. Fzabkar’s interpretation of the DR world and may not reflect reality.

[legend1011]

My Data Recovery efforts took a turn for the worst last night!...

Fine, My data is not easily accessed on the Fujitsu MHV2120BH hard drive. I can just use my 3 month old backup on a USB Hard Drive and move on with my life right? WRONG!...

My USB backup doesn't have any data on it! Apparently, I moved (consolidated) all of my data on the USB backup only to "move" it to my Fujitsu MHV2120BH (all eggs in one basket - No BACKUP!). My USB drive was completely empty!. Luckily, I have had experience with a free recovery tool "Restoration 3.2.13". I crossed my fingers and it appears I was able to restore my pictures from the USB "backup" to another brand new USB hard drive. It appears pictures and video restore without any problems, but TXT, Microsoft Word Docs, Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets, Adobe PDFs, etc... are hit in miss. Some of them appear to restore correctly, but the data is corrupted!!!!

My last round of questions:
1) What FREE tools do you recommend for restoring DELETED files/documents that haven't been overwritten on the Hard Drive yet. I'm currently using "Restoration 3.2.13" but I'm hoping there may be something superior. Are there any that aren't "FREE", but worth the money in your opinion?

2) What FREE Imaging software do you recommend? I'm currently not imaging drives, but it would be nice to have this available for times I need to quickly copy a disk. I have experience with Acronis. Are there any that aren't "FREE", but worth the money in your opinion?

Just want to get some advice on good software to use. Right now I'm scared to touch the drive because I don't want to risk having "DELETED" data be overwritten by Windows processes. I just need an effective way to restore the Deleted data off the USB drive.

Thanks so much!

[legend1011]

EDIT: I also came across the "SOFTWARE" link on this website. It seems like "HDD Raw Copy Tool" might be good "Imaging Tool". How would one uncompressed the compressed image it creates? I imagine I would just use a IMG program to actually do the restore??? Thanks

[northwind]

Try R-Studio to recover your files. There is a demo you can use to see if files are recoverable, and then purchase the license.