HDD Still Not Working After PCB Swap

[Robert413]

Hi! I'm new to the forum, only having found it just now while trying to figure out the next step in trying to repair my hard drive. If there IS a next step.

I have a WD 3TB hard drive (WD30EZRZ) that abruptly died when I was attempting to install an additional drive. I'm not sure what happened, since I had everything powered down when I was working on my system. But regardless: the new HDD worked fine... And the old one was dead. No response when the system turned on. No drive noise or vibration. Nonfunctional even with new power cable, etc etc.

I did some research and decided to attempt a PCB swap. It seemed like a good idea at the time, erspecially since the drive hadn't been making any odd noises or the like prior to failure. I performed the swap without swapping the bios chip and lo and behold! The drive spun up when powered on! Of course, my computer BIOS and software didn't recognize it. So the next thing I did was bring the old and new PCBs to a local repair shop, and had the guy there swap out the 8-pin BIOS chips for me. (I have ZERO skill with a soldering iron.)

I brought the new PCB with the old BIOS chip back home, put everything back together again.... And still no luck. Hard drive spins when powered, but software / Motherboard BIOS does not recognize it. Under device manager it shows as "unknown device" and says it "was not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match." In the MB BIOS it shows a spot for it, but no information on the make/model/etc, just like before the chip swap.

I have, at this point, reached the limits of my knowledge base. Is there anything else that I, as an amateur, might be able to do to recover this hard drive? Any way to flash the bios with a new set of firmware or the like? Any wires to jiggle or incantations to speak while waving chicken bones over it? Any recommendations at all? There's nothing on it worth shelling out hundreds let alone thousands of dollars for data recovery. So if there's nothing more to be done for it in house, then I suppose that's the end of the line for this drive, alas.

[Lardman]

Can you post of picture donor board with original rom - wouldn't be the first time we've seen soldering issues when swapping over a ROM. Did they put the donor rom on the patient PCB?, If you have the drive the donor PCB came with try putting both PCB's on the donor drive see if either work.

If it's spinning and not clicking at all and there's been no trauma to the drive (power cut/dropped etc) it may be a firmware issue. These aren't really the sort of thing you can home fix and diagnosis can difficult remotely. There's a well regarded company over that side of the pond doing this sort of recovery work for around 300 USD - they are well regarded so you shouldn't need to shell out thousands, if you want to sent it to a DR pro.

[fzabkar]

Was there any visible damage on the patient PCB? Did you test the TVS diodes?

[Robert413]

Lardman> I'm attaching two photos of the bios chip. They're really great, but they're the best I can manage with my phone. I took two so that both sides of the soldering job would be well lit. To my eye, the soldering looks to be good. No bridging or the like at any rate. I'm afraid I didn't think to take photos of the new PCB and the original PCB before dropping them off. But I did mark the old, failed PCB board before dropping it off. And looking closely at the BIOS chip itself, the markings on the chip on the new PCB look worn and faded, as I'd expect from an older chip. The BIOS chip he left with the old board looks brand new.

I DID pay a bit of attention to the orientation of the markings on the old board, and as far as I can tell the BIOS chip was installed correctly. Though it hardly matters at this point. From what I understand, if the BIOS was installed upside down, it would have been fried when it was turned on. Which leaves me back at square one anyway.

So, as near as I can tell (which is a pretty low bar) it looks like it's the correct chip, in the correct orientation, soldered in properly.

fzabkar> Nope. I didn't see any obvious scorch marks or damaged components on the original board. It failed rather suddenly, while I was swapping hard drives. Which I did with the computer shut down at the time. So I'm not sure WHAT happened to it, but a power surge seems unlikely under the circumstances.

As for the TVS diodes... I have no idea what/where those are? Or how to check them? Can they be checked with a standard multimeter, or is something else required?


Thanks for the responses and help guys!

Attachments

BIOS Chip from the other side

BIOS Chip from one side

[Lardman]

Soldering job looks good, nice and tidy and the correct orientation, the fact flux can still be seen is reassuring. As the drive is spinning it's not going to be the TVS diode on the donor although could have been on the patient.

It's looking more and more likely to be a firmware problem, getting something seen in the bios would help. You could try removing the PCB from the drive body and powering up to see if anything is shown in the bios. You're very quickly getting to the stage of needing tools (hardware and software) to progress things. I've not checked for a while but WDmavel may be the way to go if you really don't want to try a dr pro.

[fzabkar]

Check D4, D3, R67 and R64 on the patient PCB (near the SATA power connector). If D3 or R67 are damaged, then your preamp may have been damaged, too. However, if the drive doesn't spin down after spinning up, then preamp damage would be unlikely.