didn't you examine platter before going to great lenghts playing around with your pcb? I can't be bothered to read the entire thread, what made you think pcb was faulty if the disk was dropped?

Well as a test, you could take your fully working 2nd donor disk and tempoarily put on the 1st donor pcb (with disk #0 rom contents on it) and see what happens
Should spin and probably tick is the incorrect rom contents arent allowing the SA area to be read [guess]
The could try copying 2nd donor rom contents to this pcb
to confirm it works with the correct rom contents

Still doesnt help with original disk #0

I wouldn't use the good heads from donor #2 on disk #0 yet

Could maybe do a head and rom swap from #2 to #1, just to prove it is possible

Could take the heads from #0 (which were the good heads from #1) and put them back on drive #1 to check if thay are still working
Yes, in fact that would be the best first step

Then if that set of heads is still good, need to see if anyway to put them on #0 but somehow bypass the need to read the scratched area.
And/or see if you can force it to no need to read the SA
(but I think only PC3000 and or knowledge of factory mode and loading new firmware can do that)

Put the heads back in the donor and see of they still work. If not, the scratch destroyed them or the transplant was done bad. If they still work, you have another problem. Remember that one bad bit in the eeprom is enough to cause problems.

Dobre

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Thank you all very very much for your suggestions!

@HDD Spaz: I had to change the PCB of my patient disk because I'm stupid and short circuited it. When the accident with the disk happened and heard the ticking heads, I started shorting random points on the PCB thinking that the the electric shock might revive the heads... This is ridiculous, I know, but I did it... Then, I fell into the snake nest when I destroyed my chip while transplanting it to the 1st donor's PCB... So, now I am where I would be one month before if I hadn't destroyed my original chip in the first place.

@xsoliman: The tests I've made so far are:

Disk#0 with PCB#2 and ROM#0 => Ticking heads, nothing else happens
Disk#0 with PCB#1 and ROM#2 => Ticking heads, nothing else happens
Disk#2 with PCB#1 and ROM#2 => Disk initializes and operates fine
Disk#2 with PCB#2 and ROM#0 => Disk spindles, no ticking heads, but disk does not appear in Windows either

I would make more tests, but from Disk#1 I only have the PCB and that without its ROM (it broke in two pieces while unsoldering it), also its heads are currently in Disk#0. So I trashed the main body with platters...

Legend: #0 = patient, #1 = 1st donor, #2 = 2nd donor

@dobrevjetser: I can't anymore put back Heads#1 to Disk#1 because I trashed it... And even if I hadn't, I still wouldn't be able to test it because I don't have ROM#1. As for the bit errors, I admit that this idea crossed my mind before, but ROM#0 was identified by the programmer fine, with its Device ID 010212 (S25FL004A*SOIC8), and I even hex compared the 2 dumps (ROM#0 and ROM#2), and they seemed similar. Of course they had their differences, but the rest 60-70% was identical... I even found Disk#0's serial number in its dump. Anyway, I know all these are only indicative, and do not suggest a foolproof of no corruption, but I think it's pretty unlikely to have happened. Besides, I read ROM#0 about a dozen of times, and each time it returned the same checksum. Also, when I tried Disk#2 with ROM#0 the disk was not ticking, it was spindling but was not recognized by Windows, so the ticking of Disk#0 is caused by something else.

I don't know what else to think or say. I'm clueless at the moment...

I did the following things today...

I transplanted Heads#2 to Disk#0. As soon as I powered the disk, heads started ticking...

I transplanted them back to Disk#2, and the disk was recognized successfully and without a problem (so at least I know I was able to do a successful transplant).

I'm starting to think that my media is degraded, or even the chassis of the disk was slightly twisted from the fall (it fell off from 50-60cm). Otherwise, I can't explain the fact that 2 heads I've transplanted in it go crazy, while on their original disk they work fine afterwards. Or,even donor disks were incompatible in the first place...

Anyway, I think I've reached a point where this is far beyond my equipment and/or knowledge... So I hate myself for saying this, but is anyone willing to give it a try?

I want to make it clear that data at this point is not so important to me, I mainly want to know (out of curiosity, because this has been bugging me for the last two months) if it's doable with the correct equipment and/or knowledge... Besides, I cannot afford right now any expensive recovery, but the one (if any) interested can investigate the problem, identify it, and give me a price quote for a recovery. Then, sometime in the future I may accept the quote, so that he actually performs the recovery.

So, is there anyone willing to do that?

I'll do it. Having read everything which has been performed I will charge $600 to look at the drive and recovery costs will be $2000 - $6000.

I'm no expert, but sounds like the good heads in disk #0 plus good? rom#0
is having trouble finding / reading some sectors it needs to initialise
(some SA sectors)

It might be possible to override that somehow with a special loader etc

If I had the equipment and knowledge I would give it a go (for free)
but I don't, so I can't

Maybe we can persuade someone on here to give it a go (for free or cheap to the diagnosis stage), as we would all be interested in the final outcome

Try disk#0 with heads#2 and pcb#2 (that is rom#2). I had 1.8" toshibas that were clicking with donnor heads but became ready with donnor heads+pcb.

I tried something similar more than a month ago, that is Disk#0 with Heads#1 and PCB#1 (with ROM#1), before I tried to unsolder ROM#1 from that PCB that destroyed the chip... The outcome was identical... Ticking heads...

It's obvious even to a no-expert like me that the ticking has nothing to do with the heads/PCB...

Since I found no serious interest by anyone on looking at this, I just found a completely identical Toshiba MK3252GSX HDD2H01 B UK01 S to mine, just to eliminate the 1% incompatibility between mine and the two Toshiba MK3252GSX HDD2H01 B UK01 T donors I initially purchased... So, I'm expecting this to arrive, and I'll give it one more try...

Edit: I'm also thinking it might be a good idea to transplant my platters on this new drive that will arrive, to eliminate any chance of spindle degradation or chassis bend or whatever... But that would need a special platter removal tool... How much do these tools cost? And actually are they 1000% safe that platters will not move inside them during the transplant loosing their alignment?

you really are clutching at straws. Save your money and time. give it up.

The problems :

1) contamination (the drive was opened in normal environment, even if you are fast enough during head swap, it is always uncontrolled environment
2) probable media damage right from the start (the cause)
3) unknown result of head swap and possible surface damage as result from it
4) possible incompatibility issues between headstacks (to be analyzed)
5) "varie ed eventuali" (assorted and incidental issues they may come out).

I assume that at present the ROM is saved so the original ROM is available (assume also it is correct and good copy).

Honestly, at this point we are talking more about data reconstruction than data recovery...

After searching for the ST 25P40V6 eeprom chip I came up with this thread. I am relieved that it this is an actual discrete eeprom chip because i can easily unsolder it.

I have lost, well, my data is inaccessible on a Seagate 2.5" momentus 500GB HDD, luckily, a friend of mine has the same laptop with same HDD an I will try to swap the PCB's. OS froze with a blue screen and after a reboot, bios reported HDD error.
Drive, to my luck doesn't 'click' and spins up just fine. However, bios reports it as 0MB/0GB in size.

So, I have tried warming up HDD to its working temperature with no success. Haven't tried cooling it below room temperature. I have left it to cool, but the result is still the same.

What may have caused this ?

If I swap PCB's is is necessary to swap EEPROM's as well ?

PrinceOfAbyss, you are incredible that you have even tried this. I am sure you have learned a lot in this process and I hope with, albeit slim chances, you will eventually be able to recover your data. I am very thankful for sharing your experience with us.

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If you boil an aquarium you obtain fish soup, if you cool the fish soup you won't get an aquarium again.
About the cause : internal failure (likely not the PCB) like head problems or firmware fault.




There was most probably other damage beside the PCBs (re-read the whole thread)

AIUI, the problem is most likely internal, ie not a PCB fault. :-(

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There is a firmware download to an external hard drive brand of toshiba Mk2555gsx. please help me! Thanks

my external hard drive can only read the bios but could not read windows, is there a solution for that? thanks

if DIY is ur only option then try bit copying the drive onto a good drive and run a logical scan if u are successful with the cloning. HDDclone , CopyR , DDrescue, etc.

great story, but wheres the end?

Oh man, I just found this post and had to say something, Sorry for bumping this post, was there any success on recovery of the pics and data...

Anyway, my two cense, if its worth anything.

From where I am standing, or sitting, I think you have done a brilliant job in retreating the data from that chip that was accidentally trashed when you took it off the PCB job, so hopefully the main task might be completed, but I do see a huge problem that has caught you dead cold, and that was the ring, or scratch on the disk surface, which I am certain is causing the problem

More than likely, that area, that is scratched contains the drives onboard data thats loaded behind the scenes, so when the drive tries to load that data, it cant, then goes into a loop.

The only thing I can think of is, you need some software or a device that will forcefully move the heads in a pattern to download all the data RAW from the patters onto a good disk and then shift through all the rubbish until you got the files you need. Your FAT partition or whatever would be screwed as well as your boot sector, but you need to find a way to read all the rest of the data skipping parts of the disk that have been damaged.

But I fear that the main damage had been done, when you cracked the casing on the first fun, the heads were exposed to the elements, think of a naked woodman walking into a stand storm and coming out all minced up. with a drive with so much capacity, the heads would have been smaller then two years ago. The more space on the drive, the smaller the heads..

Then each time you turn on the drive, the partials of dust and air would be stirred up and cause damage to the new heads you transplanted.

But in the end, hards drives are interesting things and playing around with them can get one hooked, like I have been many times in the past, but the data is always backed up.

Anyway, let us know how it turned out... You might have tossed the thing by now, but it was a worthy read, one that should be published.

Shane