Hi guys and gurus,

I dun goofed with my dad's [work] laptop. After some unresponsive behavior in Windows, I forced a shutdown and upon powering up the disk was dead.

It spins up, it does some repetitive cycling of the heads, but that's it. No sata or sata-usb cable can detect any logic on it.

Do you have any ideas where I could start from in recovering the [very very] important data on it, without having to sell one of my kidneys to a professional?

More specifically, how important is the part number when trying to replace the PCB? Because I found an almost matching PCB, but from an older model. The main model serial still matches, i.e. HTS543232A7A384, but the part number is 0A78603 instead of 0A79636. The one I intend to buy is dated Jan11, whereas the one I want to repair is dated Jul12. Would I have any chance with that PCB? What would be the approach here?

I'm an engineer, so I have a decent 100MHz oscilloscope, a soldering station and a benchtop power supply. Could I possibly probe it to see if it needs some kind of rework, or see some voltage levels to pinpoint the issue?

I'm in [BIG] trouble, or better said, my dad is in big trouble if he doesn't have his data until the 5th of January, so any advice would be most welcome.

Thanks a lot!

Here's a photo of the serials on the unit, if it's of any help: http://imgur.com/9XVrTXN

Unresponsive behavior in Windows can be a symptom of a faulty hard drive; so I would not assume that a forced shutdown would have caused the problem if that is what you were implying. Hard drives are generally designed to handle unplanned power loss events.



In general, if the drive spins up, it is unlikely to be a problem with the PCB.

You could for example have a degraded head (I would guess most likely) or a firmware problem. It is hard to make a diagnosis without proper tools.

Are they any data recovery companies in your area that offer free diagnosis?

It makes sense, given that the brushless motor has to be controlled by some kind of firmware for the spin ups/downs.


I don't see how a degraded head can render the drive unrecognizable by the SATA controller of the motherboard. Maybe my knowledge is off, but I would assume that it (the hdd controller) would at least broadcast its ID and other info on the SATA bus. So a firmware problem would make more sense (I guess).


In fact, I only looked at the recovery costs (an arm and a leg) . They can actually diagnose it for free in one day or for 15 bucks in 1 hour. I'll definitely check that out tomorrow. Thanks for the great idea!

To get back to one of my previous concerns:

Do you think I would have half of chance with that PCB, or it does not make any sense at all (due to firmware, calibrations, hardcoded values etc)?

I can give you an example: When a fully functional drive is powered up, it normally becomes "ready" after several seconds, the same drive with degraded heads might take 90 seconds for example to become ready (if at all). The computer BIOS may have a timeout value less than the time the drive takes to become ready, so it may not detect the drive.

I recommend you get the free diagnosis from the data recovery company, as doing your own diagnosis could make the problem worse.


Purely for reference:

http://www.donordrives.com/hard-drive-pcb-donor-match

Note: NV-RAM Chip Transfer Required.

The NV-RAM transfer wouldn't be an issue. I have all the tools necessary.

I'm waiting on someone to send me some pictures to see if I can match the first two lines. Although I doubt it.
Edit: they dont match.

Thanks for the hints.

Ok. So I found an identical match.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCB-0A75647-DA4 ... 8#shpCntId

He's from Ukraine, I'm from Romania, which is great.

Question is: do I still need to swap the NV-RAM between the boards?

With the importance of the data and the time constraints, you had better get the drive to a professional data recovery lab before the damage gets worse. Likely damaged heads, damaged media and/or damaged SA. Unlikely a DIY job.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

+1 I agree, likely heads...seen it lots of times.

_________________
Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

Instead of diving in without thinking straight I would suggest you carry out some simple diagnostics in Mhdd or Victoria. So you need to mount the drive connected to a sata port on a desktop/workstation pc. Check for drive id, smart values, and maybe quickly check the surface media at the begining middle and end if you can. Also you can see how long it takes to come ready (if it does that is). If you don't know how to do this then learn to do it on a spare drive or even on a good system drive first! Then do it on your faulty drive. Without doing this everything you do is pure guesswork! If the drive dosn't come ready and you keep hearing the cycling noise then the drive would probably have internal problems. Good luck!

I found an exact PCB match on ebay, but the seller wanted to know more about my problem, and in the end he actually refused to accept my payment because he's 99.9% sure that my PCB is ok. Great guy! (for reference, his ebay is: http://www.ebay.com/usr/data_service and he's from Ukraine)

I've made a couple of sound recordings, if you want you can check them out here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjvIpns2okg
and here (better quality):
https://soundcloud.com/dragos-stefan-ci ... n-up-sound

Do these recordings shed any more light on the issue?


I can't use anything like that, since I don't even see it in BIOS.

Thanks guys.

This is poor advice...especially if you read the OP and the drive's symptoms. Never run diagnostic software on a failing hard drive unless you are 100% sure you either have the data 100% backed up or you don't need the data from the drive at all.


That is very nice of them.


Yes, my original analysis remains. Not a DIY project. Send to a pro before it is too late.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Its not really enough to go on so my thought was to try and get the op to do a few checks. Anyway I have a feeling this drive is never going to make it as far as a pro.

Here I can only but agree with you!

Imma prove you guys wrong, or fail miserably and hide under a rock for the rest of my life.

I just ordered a 'similar' unit, same part number and serial, just different labeling and some minor details like, you know, branding.

Long story short, I'll attempt a DYI head change. I'll keep you posted nevertheless. Should begin working on it on new years' eve. I have a quasi-clean room at my disposal.

From what I gather there's only a single platter, so I'll improvise with a spacer.

I have a feeling that we're more afraid of it than it's afraid of us.


Thanks for the vote of confidence!

The head swap e lupta mai mica. The imaging process este lupta mai mare. Poate esti norocos..

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

You are correct! Your knowledge is off, or perhaps just missing entirely.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

This isn't gonna end well

Even if you do get lucky enough and find compatible heads, and get then heads swapped, how are you going to handle the non-loading of the PSHT and RDMT modules into drives RAM, which more often than not happens with non-native heads?

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

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

Hmm..That's exactly what I was going to say....The big problem after head swap is the known bug of ARM family..Non loading of the PSHT in RAM...And unfortunately only PC3000 can handle this until now.

Good luck.
Rgds

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www.datasave.ro

Did not try and deny that.

I'll just give it a try, to at least try and have some fun. We reevaluated the importance of the data, like some accounting figures which we can recover from somewhere else.

And given that my knowledge is missing entirely, I'm just going to assume that the head is a passive component (gain amps included); thus, I conclude that if I replace a passive component with a hopefully identical one, there should be no problem with the digital aspects like the aging and defect tables. I just don't see any link between them. Don't want to sound ignorant, and I totally respect your advice, but there's just no other option and now I'm just curious to see if it works.