Fujitsu and Toshiba 2.5'': make one good from two bad

[arinci]

Hello, I'd like to know if there is an easy way, using free tools, to "combine" two drives to have a working one.
This is the situation: I have two pairs of drives, one is composed of 2 Toshiba MK2565GSX, while the other one is composed of 2 Fujitsu MJA2250BH-G2.

On each pair I have one drive that has broken SATA connector (but probably good disks) and the other drive has good PCB but heavily damaged disks (huge number of remapped sectors). So I'd like to try to save them from the trash bin, combining the best of each one.

My question: is there a way to swap the PCB of the 2 hdd and then reprogram the ROM taking the flash content from the disk with damaged PCB? My only intent is to save one drive, I'm not interested in data rescue as there is nothing valuable on that (ancient) drives!

I just removed the PCB from the drives, to have a look at what's on the back of it and I see that on Toshiba there is a little chip marked IC602 but nothing similar on the Fujitsu pcb. I'm not good with soldering iron so I'm thinking to use, for Toshiba drives, a CH341A USB chip programmer to read/write the ROM directly from the PCB: will it works?

Anyone can give me a little help? Or I have to definitively move these 4 hdd to the trash bin?

Thank you!

[ShaneWard]

Just remove the SATA connector part and solder it to the broken SATA board hard drive. So only move the connector. The soldering will be tricky but should be doable. Do you have images?

[BGman]

Just remove the SATA connector part and solder it to the broken SATA board hard drive. So only move the connector. The soldering will be tricky but should be doable. Do you have images?

Is this the "English way"?



The normal people would only swap the Flash chips...

[pepe]

No flash chip on the fuji, at least that's what the OP said...
writing rom on the toshiba is possible but the problem is with reading, coz you have to write some prog to read it and convert. Moving the chip is easier for earthlings, however, a soldering iron is not a good choice there, use hot air or infrared.

pepe

[labtech]

May have fuzzy memory, but for the Fuji, if the PCBs are fully compatible, a straight PCB swap should work.

[Tomset]

labtech,

May have fuzzy memory, but for the Fuji, if the PCBs are fully compatible, a straight PCB swap should work.

not always.
Even within the same family Fuji, adaptive and non-adaptive ROMs may come across.

[fzabkar]

If only the SATA power connector is damaged, then the easiest, cheapest, and safest solution (for me) would be to hardwire a 4-pin Molex peripheral connector to the PCB.

[BGman]

labtech,

May have fuzzy memory, but for the Fuji, if the PCBs are fully compatible, a straight PCB swap should work.

not always.
Even within the same family Fuji, adaptive and non-adaptive ROMs may come across.

The lack of Flash chip means that ROM is non-adaptive....so just swap the PCB's.

[Tomset]

The lack of Flash chip means that ROM is non-adaptive....so just swap the PCB's.

Fuji does not happen without a ROM chip.
But there are non-adaptive families.
The content of the ROM itself determines whether it is adaptive or not.

[ShaneWard]

Just remove the SATA connector part and solder it to the broken SATA board hard drive. So only move the connector. The soldering will be tricky but should be doable. Do you have images?

Is this the "English way"?



The normal people would only swap the Flash chips...

If its only the sata connector broken, why not replace it with a new one. it would be far more easier then a PCB swap and messing around with the ROM and stuff. and less risky too. Of course if there are more serous problems like the tracks are all damaged, then replacing the PCB will be the only thing. But not for a simple connector problem.

[arinci]

Thanks for all the suggestions.
My feelings is that is not so simple to remove the damaged SATA connector and then solder the one removed from the other PCB. At least not for an hobbyist like me, with a simple 25W solder iron.

Regarding the swap of PCB on Fujitsu HDD: I tried to do, but no success! After the swap the disk is not recognized by the PC. It means that some specific/adaptive info is saved somewhere, probably inside the main controller on the PCB.

Same for Toshiba, but here was simpler to understand as a little flash memory is present on the PCB.

At the end I’m just searching a little tool to read/write flash memory on the two HDD. Eventually also using the serial connector present on Toshiba HDD. For the Fujitsu disk I think that the only way is to use a sw to read/write flash rom.

Do you have something to do this?
Thank you!

[pepe]

It is a fairly complex task to read and write ROM on the toshiba, it involves some programming skills, to convert the dump to various formats, a lot easier to move the rom chip...
btw, you can desolder the pins of sata connector one by one, isolating them from the pcb, that can be done with a soldering iron. Moving the rom involves other soldering techniques, which are not availabe to you as far as i understand. So this might work indeed.

pepe

[BGman]

It takes me less than 5 min to swap flash chips on two PCB's. I'm able to swap super I/O chips on older mainboards, but never got success with SATA connectors!!!