Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
March 26th, 2015, 9:43
Just got a drive from a customer - he spilled milk into his computer and it's a mess. I guess the pcb has died, but I don't usually work with hdd's so I'm not 100% sure. He's a regular, so I figured I could help him save some money fixing it for him by replacing the pcb.
Read somewhere that this can't be done withouth moving the pcb bios to a working pcb, but is this always the case? What will happen if I were to just replace the pcb with a new one (which I found online) and plug it into my computer?
March 26th, 2015, 10:50
According to your ques: You can try straight SWAP, if ROM version is same, then it will work, if version is different, then it will not work and non-destructive try. Then you can SWAP the ROM also if required at the end.
March 26th, 2015, 15:12
What if the ROM is broken?
How can I make sure I get the same version?
March 26th, 2015, 16:20
Great tutorial! I think I'm a little over my head here, so I guess it will be simpler to just send it to a company that are experts in the area. Thanks for the help.

What would you charge to fix this, btw? Not that I will be sending it to you, I'd just like to compare the prices. It's really expensive in my country.
March 27th, 2015, 2:15
What is the BF41 number on the PCB?
March 27th, 2015, 5:14
Haven't tried removing the ROM - I don't even know which of the chips that is.
BF41 - 00354b 01.
Other things written on it: WC REV.6 20130928 U3A 0BGN; M8_REV.06; Topsearch 94v-0 TS-M-8V02C SG; 1 308 C-20147 30-03
March 27th, 2015, 12:39
It's the "BIOS IC":
http://ep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-144375849714 ... b-fw-9.gifhttp://www.hdd-parts.com/13102682.htmlUnless you've done this before, I recommend that you get someone else to do the chip swap.
March 27th, 2015, 14:43
Hmm would be interesting to just test a new PCB and see if it works without moving the bios.. I can't break anything doing that, right, it would just be unreadable? Worst case is that it jus won't work? But what do I do if the bios is broken as well, data rec services should be able to recover the data anyway, right?
March 27th, 2015, 17:28
Thanks for the good info, you're really helping me out here.

Do you know of a place in the UK or other places in nordthern Europe where I can buy the piece I need?
April 1st, 2015, 10:00
Bump
April 1st, 2015, 13:00
I did, but I kinda worry I'll buy the wrong one..
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