Hitachi Travelstar 60gb 2.5" heads stuck at parking RAMP

[Vaako]

Have a problem with the heads stuck at the parking RAMP.

Harddisk:
Hitachi Travelstar 2.5" 60gb
Model: HTS548060M9AT00 P/N:08K0638

The heads or amp where damage and needed a head swap.
After the head swap it does not go to the platter SA for initialization.
The head is not locked mechanically and can move freely.

Thought this was a PCB failure and I swap ROM chip to a working donor board and still the same issue.

Never seen this before.

Any ideas?

[data-medics]

I'd have to see inside to really know, but here's a few things to check for that I've seen.

1. one of the heads isn't actually parked properly on the ramp and it's hitting the edge of the platter when it tries to unload.
2. while very uncommon, I've seen the magnet actually break on a 2.5" drive and the broken piece was jamming the actuator.
3. something else could be stuck to the magnet preventing it from moving (like a lost screw).

Another possibility is that the drive is detecting a shorted out read/write head and giving up before it actually starts to seek.

[fzabkar]

Is it possible that the donor preamp is incompatible?

Does the drive still spin up if you isolate the HDA contacts? If so, then this would suggest that the PCB does not need to ID the preamp before spinning up. It might be worth investigating how the donor behaves when its HDA is isolated.