Hi, thank you for the answers.
Lardman wrote:
< Insert usual recommendation about taking important data to a DR pro. >
I've searched wrong initially and barely found someone able to do the soldering itself. Other electronics repairs are either too busy or maybe swimming in money so they didn't even want to bother with the relatively trivial chip swapping. Though I've looked again now and there are actually some people providing "data recovery" services in the area, I don't really know how "pro" they are (my guess most of them are not too pro). I guess I'll go through them now, at least no harm in asking, but first I would want to somewhat understand the current problem myself, to not to trust them blindly.
Lardman wrote:
Connect it directly via sata the the motherboard. Does the BIOS see the drive correctly both in terms of model and capacity. If so try to clone/image the drive and work on the clone, you can take the risk not to it's your data once it's gone it's gone.
Point something like rstudio/dmde/ufs explorer at the drive if it see can read any structure from it.
Motherboard BIOS also reports the correct model, but zero capacity. I haven't had the chance to connect it back to the PC again and test the utilities you've mentioned on it, but I suppose if there are "zero" sectors reported then the device just will not return any data for the software to scan anyways?
By the way, is it safe to connect just the PCB dismounted from the hard drive itself to the motherboard? I suppose it should be, but don't want to test by trial and error.
fzabkar wrote:
This PCB has proper protection, so it is likely that the damage was confined to the TVS diode(s) and zero-ohm resistor(s), as @Lardman has already mentioned. If you still have your original PCB, measure D3, D4, R60 and the other resistor. That will tell us where to look.
Lardman wrote:
Chances are you just needed to clip a diode and/or replace a fuse on the original PCB - now, who know.
It appears both my boards have a somewhat different layout from the one you've provided above and it doesn't have the markings, but based on the looks and placement, I guessed those would be the right components:
https://i.imgur.com/ygPfexg.jpgAnother angle so that the markings are readable:
https://i.imgur.com/NJ1W1gP.jpgSo, I guess you are probably right then? Should I measure something else, or is it certain that just the resistors should have been swapped from the donor board?
fzabkar wrote:
The ROM transfer appears to be OK as the drive wouldn't spin up if there was something wrong.
I also hope so. As I've mentioned, the instructions to the swap PCBs weren't mentioning any particular precautions for the BIOS chips soldering. Also, the repairman performing the swap is specializing in mobile devices, and I guess there can be some delicate ROM chips too, so he probably used some safe default temperature setting for the hot-air gun.
fzabkar wrote:
BTW, your strange use of "pancakes" when referring to platters suggest that you may be Russian, innit?
Well, either it's strange or it suggests.
Always were calling them like that, or rather crepes, here in Russia. After all, isn't the similarity almost uncanny?
https://www.nigella.com/assets/uploads/ ... 207603.jpg