Hear hear!

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

No, in fact I completely agree with you the way you put it. I mean, it was totally unacceptable to rush and try the chip transplant without the proper tools in hand. But sometimes excitement is a bad companion. However, you examine the whole chip issue (disaster + remedy) as one, while I was talking only about the second part. OK, sometimes due to a variety of reasons shit may happen, but isn't it admirable that against all odds and even with two pros telling me the chip is gone I was able to read it in the end? I repeat, isolate the disaster part that was a plain stupidity; just think of the remedy... Isn't it remarkable? Nevertheless, doesn't it tell you something about the person who achieved it (at least that he is nifty).


My perception about fora is the following: A forum is a place where knowledge and/or experience is being transferred among members. It doesn't matter which direction knowledge goes as long as it is being spread. However, isn't it reasonable that novices get help by experts? How on earth could the opposite happen? Have you ever seen a ball climbing a hill upwards? Of course, no one can persistently demand to be enlightened, but no one deserves to be laughed at either. The "problem" is that experts here are also professionals on the same field, so money that is involved complicates things and causes some conflicts. To an extent this is respectable, but when that fragile point is surpassed, for me, the whole reason of the forum is surpassed too.

And I'm saying the above as an admin of a forum as well. Different field (an automotive forum), but the point is the same... Novice members register all the time to ask questions about their cars (how they'll increase the horsepower, what sound system they'd install, what tires to choose, etc etc). How could I expect a 18yr old guy, who let's say just bought his first car, to give me some knowledge first, in order to give him my answer to his question later?

Beside the forum I administer, I'm a member of many, I mean MANY, fora (just google PrinceOfAbyss) and I with all honesty can assure you that this is the first time I'm in a situation like this. That is, senior members being rude to newbie members who do the self-evident that is ask questions... Maybe it's because any other forum I'm a member of is not haunted by professionals, but rather people who just like to help other people, and money is not involved at all...

Anyway, if I were mayasoft, I would either make this a private forum just for pros to discuss their innovations far away from others' eyes, or at least suggest to seniors that they should be as helpful as possible (OK without harming their own businesses) to newbies. Otherwise, tell me a reason why a forum like this should exist? Really, what would you expect if you suffered a data-loss and found a forum named HDD guru? That you could register there and find info about a DIY repair... No? Would you ever imagine that it could be a forum where gurus are there with one and only reason, to attract customers?


Thank you very much. I don't have anything more to say.

I think you were very lucky, but in answer to your question, yes it is admirable that you have had the persistence and patience to pursue this. This is how most of the pros started.

This industry is difficult from the top. Even us pros struggle with information. Acelabs for example, for PC3K alone we pay €900 or something equally for support - yet even then they refuse to answer all but the simplest of questions. Salvation Data support is worse and the forums that you get access to by paying for these tools contain no more information than this site.

I guess the fact that we pros are on our own in this field can have a negative effect on those that just need a little nudge in the right direction.

What automotive forums are you on? What cars are you into? Please update this thread with your result - I still hope you pull this off.

I received the chips today.

I soldered one of them to the adapter, I tried to program it... Bam... Nothing... The programmer couldn't even identify it... OK, I thought, I burnt it... Another chip... Again nothing... To cut a long story short, not a single chip could be programmed...

So, I started thinking they might be faulty from the manufacturer...

But after some close inspection, I realized that the metal square area that is beneath the chips is large enough on ST chips (on my original Spansion it was smaller), so it touched the pads of the adapter's PCB, short-circuiting the pads of the chip once soldered...

The solution was easy, and you can see it in the image below:



Anyway, once I programmed one chip, I soldered it on the disk's PCB, and tried the disk. It spindled normally, but the heads were ticking...

Anyway, this was enough headache for today to program the chip...

Tomorrow, I'll inspect the heads once more, and if they still tick, I'll swap them again with the second donor's (now there are installed the first donor's heads)...

Anything in particular I could take care of? I guess there is no calibration in those heads, is there? I mean, you install them, close the disk's cover and it should work? Right?

Damn, I'm a little sad... I was so sure that it would work once I put a chip with the appropriate bootloader in it...

Well, I'm thinking it may not be a good idea to transfer the heads from the last working identical disk I have.

I've read some posts about transferring the firmware from an identical disk to the problematic one (supposing that the error is in fact in my disk that cannot read the SA correctly).

The question is, can I through MHDD, or any other software, identify the exact cause of the ticking? Or, would I need more sophisticated (and not-free) tools/software?

I feel I'm that close to the solution, and it bothers me I don't have the knowledge/tools to do it...

I think that is what the pro's have been saying since the begining and you finally have come to the same conclusion with your own admission.
Bad luck!

Thanks for the productive and informative post mate!

I now have two identical disks (my patient, and the second donor) working (mine is just spindling and ticking, the other is working fine).

This is because I fixed the first donor's PCB (it suffered a broken path during the first chip transplant). So I fixed the path, and programmed a chip with the content of the second donor's chip, so I put it all together, and the second donor disk is working fine.

Can I use any software, like MHDD, to run comparisons on both disks' parameters in order to identify what's wrong with my disk?

Guys please give me some tips!

"Can I use any software, like MHDD, to run comparisons on both disks' parameters in order to identify what's wrong with my disk?"

No.

There are only two possibilities at this point: bad heads or bad media (and sometimes erratic spindle motor but that doesn't sound like the problem here). Forget the SA, that's not the answer; the important parts of it are located on the PCB. If you're certain your head swap was good then that leaves the media as the culprit. And, in this case, that would be the end of the road. Period. And incidentally, congratulations on repairing the broken flash chip. You should at least feel satisfaction that you got that far.

"Forget the SA, that's not the answer; the important parts of it are located on the PCB."

What if you have some bad on SA without media damage... Never happened ?

Maybe it's happened, but not to me. Call me lucky.

On the top platter of my patient disk there is a very light scratch forming a circle on the inmost writable area of that platter. As if the head (when the disk fell) was above that cylinder and it touched the platter while it was spindling.

But, being the inmost cylinder, shouldn't affect data only to that area? I mean, it's not somewhere in the middle that would harm the head while going from one side to the other, it's in the inner edge.

Besides, is a scratch enough to destroy each head you install on a disk?

So, supposing there is nothing useful, like firmware etc, that I can take from the second donor disk, I can at least try a second head transplant... Or is there anything else the second donor disk might be proven to be helpful for?

msurgeon thank you very much for your helpful post.

Now you are learning what makes things difficult... you could have saved a lot of trouble if you had mentioned that in your first post

_________________
You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Do you mean that this scratch is the reason that heads cannot find their way to the data? Why is that cylinder so important for the whole media?

Edit: I can try to take a picture of it, but I doubt you will be able to see anything due to the platters being reflective.

The scratch will destroy the next set of heads as well. There is a technique that can be employed in this case that might still produce a happy ending. I'm sure you'll figure it out before too long. As usual, good luck.

Don't tell me to use a fine sandpaper to make the scratch disappear!!!! This is the only thing that comes to my mind right now... So until I figure out the correct remedy for it, I shouldn't try the last set of heads on my disk...

The sandpaper method is only recommended for security erasing a drive. I am sure you'll figure out the method yourself. Just keep in mind that you have to avoid the scratch!

Do you mean that I can "tweak" the stopper of the head arm to stop the movement some mm before the scratched cylinder? How can I do this?

If that's not the case, then put some tape on the scratch? But the tape still has some height that will damage the head itself...

I'll figure it out!!! I'm gonna brainstorm now!

Thanks once again for your tips.

Edit: A scratch is inset, right? How can an inset "obstacle" damage a head that hovers above the obstacle's area? I mean, it's not something outset, like a dust particle, so how can it still threaten the head's health (besides the damaged data of course on that area)?

Does the implied technique work in case the scratch is in the middle of a platter as well? Or is it just good luck that we are talking about a scratch on the inner cylinder of the platter? I'm asking this in order to find clues about the technique itself...

E.g. I guess that if the technique actually involves tweaking the stopper, it would have no meaning to do that in case the scratch was in the middle of the platter...

Also, really, can't I do anything to determine a weak head with a free software? Doesn't MHDD examine such things? I'm also thinking of the heads preamp... Once I installed this arm, I tried the disk with the donor's PCB, but with the donor's chip as well. Could this actually damage the heads/heads' preamp using a "foreign" chip?