Seagate Momentus 7200.4 dead ROM

[MrBlub]

Hi there, I have a

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 250GB
ST9250410AS
PN: 9HV142-037
FW: D005SDM1
PCB sticker: 100563953
PCB number: 100536286 Rev E

which suddenly is no longer spinning up or making any noise at all - no spinning, no heads movement, no clicking - simply dead. As this can be often attributed to a faulty PCB, I decided to give it a try and purchased a replacement PCB with identical PN, FW, board sticker, number and revision on ebay. From previous repairs I know a simple circuit board swap will not necessarily make the drive operational and it may be necessary to transfer the PCB firmware onto the replacement PCB. Instead of soldering out and swapping the ROM chip, I wanted to read out and reprogram the chips using CH341A programmer. However, to my surprise, I cannot read out any data of the original ROM chip (equipment is fine since ROM chip of replacement PCB can be read out sucessfully). Thus, it seems the ROM chip is the faulty part (or at least one of the faulty parts) of the original PCB

Does anyone of you experts see a chance to regain access to my data?

Many thanks for your help!

[cpm1993]

Read the ROM out via terminal would be the way to confirm if the BIOS chip/PCB is messed up.

[pepe]

Hello,

i can recover from such situation, but the method is pretty expensive, be prepared...

pepe

[fzabkar]

@MrBlub, perhaps in-circuit reading was thwarted by the PCB fault?

Can you post a detailed photo of the PCB? I could help with voltage measurements, particularly the Vcc supply for the flash memory.

[MrBlub]

Read the ROM out via terminal would be the way to confirm if the BIOS chip/PCB is messed up.

I don't have the equipment for terminal read outs available atm.

i can recover from such situation, but the method is pretty expensive, be prepared...

Could you please be a bit more precise about the process and cost? Glad to hear from you also by PM.

@MrBlub, perhaps in-circuit reading was thwarted by the PCB fault? Can you post a detailed photo of the PCB? I could help with voltage measurements, particularly the Vcc supply for the flash memory.

Good point, I will desolder the chip with my hot air station and re-perform measurements to see if chip comes back to life. I have visually inspected the whole PCB for any defects but couldn't find anything, attached a photo of the EEPROM. It's a Winbond 25X40AL, same on the replacement PCB (from which I was able to read out data from).

Isn't it possible to take the ROM data from the replacement PCB (or others from the same family found on the internet), adjust this data to the faulty device (e.g. changing serial numbers or sth) and make it at least somehow accessible for data recovery purposes?

Attachments

[fzabkar]

What resistance do you measure between the Vcc of the EEPROM and ground?

As for your question regarding the use of donor "adaptives", if it were that easy, then everyone would be doing it. As it is, only a few people claim to be able to recover from such a situation.

[MrBlub]

What resistance do you measure between the Vcc of the EEPROM and ground?

Infinite resistance between Vcc and ground...dead as assumed?

[fzabkar]

I was thinking that a low resistance might be causing problems for your reader, as it would need to be able to power all the chips running off that same supply rail. Did you measure the Vcc voltage?

[DESTROY]

As for the reading of the eeprom I had the same problem in the same way, I tried to read the eeprom of a broken 2T disc and without charge the eprom of the donor disk if I can read it it seems that the original eeprom is broken in addition to the plate since the disk does not boot ..