Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

[DR-Wannabe]

Dear All Gurus,

I have a drive that i've bought that has failed. Now all it contains is Music and Video files of no importance to me, well, in the sense that the files wouldn't be difficult to find again. I'm more interested in attempting to recover this for the sake of personal training. I've done a PCB transfer before (with NVRAM Swap), but this particular case is puzzling.

Hitachi, HTS725050A9A364 - Spins up (fine), enters ready state. Attempt sector view (fail). Attempt read of total lba (fail), attempt to read SA Info (fail).

Symptoms: no clicking, no ticking, no scratching, no grinding. Everything sounds fine. The only element that is absent is any form of movement from the arm. You literally can't hear any movement.

Attempted hooking up to HD doctor, turns drive on, but can't find the hdd. Therefore can't read firmware information.

I got a feeling it must be PCB, but there is no obvious damage.

Thoughts?

Ta.

[hddlab]

I guess some damage in NVRAM or its code.

[DR-Wannabe]

I'll give it a check (When HD Doctor is working again).

Thanks for the input.

Ta

[DR-Wannabe]

@hddlab think you're correct. NVRAM failed to read, ROM succeeded. Thanks for the tip, will attempt to find donor file and repair.

[Doomer]

PCB is bad but NVRAM is OK

[DanR]

Would replacing the PCB with an identical board and then transferring the NVRAM work?

[DR-Wannabe]

Interesting, I second DanR's question.

[labtech]

Dear All Gurus,
...I've done a PCB transfer before (with NVRAM Swap), but this particular case is puzzling.
Ta.

Seem like you already tried that, no? Or you are saying in general as in other prior cases?

[hddguy]

Would replacing the PCB with an identical board and then transferring the NVRAM work?

You already have the answer for this....

PCB is bad but NVRAM is OK

[Doomer]

you need to transfer both ROM and NVRAM

[DR-Wannabe]

Dear All Gurus,
...I've done a PCB transfer before (with NVRAM Swap), but this particular case is puzzling.
Ta.

Seem like you already tried that, no? Or you are saying in general as in other prior cases?

In general. Understood, thanks for input

[pcimage]

Drive spins up OK?

No movement sounds from head at all? (i.e. they do not move over the platters on initialisation)

Could also be bad preamp, in which case it's not DIY.

I know you say that SD Doctor couldn't read the NVRAM, but I'm not reading much into that!

[fzabkar]

I have a drive that i've bought that has failed.

What was the failure mode?

Could we see a photo of the board?