Hello, I found this board after several days of research and I am glad I did. Hopefully you guys can shed some light on how I could proceed here.

What happened:
I'm an idiot and I hooked up my 3 internal HDDs to a new PSU (Corsair RM850) using an old Thermaltake modular sata power cable - and the result was no spinning, no sound, undetectable etc.
So i'm quite sure I used a cable that was mispinned for the PSU I hooked it in to.
There is no visual damage on the boards, I inspected them with a small magnifying glass, and I didn't smell any smoke or even heard the drives spin up, so my guess is i likely fried the diodes (and hopefully not the header preamps).
I have considered professional data rescue, but the quotes that were given me were all around 3000€ and one offered to try to check out and repair the boards first and inspection of the drives itself ranged quite highly. The most reputable one I was able to find, ontrack, would start at 1500€ because the drives are TB sized, so if I still want to eat I simply cannot afford this.

The boards / HDDs in Question:
I'm going to provide generic pictures of the PCBs because my cellphone's camera is not good enough to take quality pictures.

Seagate Barracuda 1TB ST1000DM003 / 10071520 REV B


WD RED 2TB WD20EFRX - 68EUZN0 / 2060771945-002 REV A


WD GOLD 6TB WD6003FRYZ / 004-0B36131


So I have bought replacement boards and don't worry, I'll let a professional solder the ROM/Bios chips onto the donor PCBs
I found a shop near me in Bochum, Germany, that specializes in cellphone and console repair and who clearly state they also do PCB repair work for these and the guy at the other end seemed trustworthy as he exactly knew what I was going to ask about the moment I talked about the HDDs and their boards, but I have some questions that remain and you guys seem very knowledgeable

1: The place I bought the boards from (and all others that I could find with 10071520 REV) are saying that for the Seagate Barracuda, and the WD RED have boards with revisions listed (A/B/C) are saying that the PCBs are compatible with each other when doing a BIOS/ROM swap.
Seagate had issues with firmware and their boards but as far as I can tell the ST1000DM003 is neither 7200.11 or Barracuda II / V - Looking at hddoracle and browsing through the threads here this seems to be the case - i'd be grateful if someone could confirm this here.

2: The WD Gold PCB (004-0B36131) does not provide any revision info, but from what I read there might? maybe? be some. It is also apparently a board either manufactured, or used, by Hitachi. The pcb is certainly a different design and has two rom chips rather than one, however I read that Hitachi likes to store the rom data in the main IC. According to this https://www.data-medics.com/forum/threads/info-wd80efax-004-0b36131-hgst-hus726t6tale6l4-pcb.4027/ it should be fine however without a main IC swap. Anyone here have some experience with newer WD Gold models?

3: The WD Red (2060771945-002) is an older model, I think made in 2014/2015 and I've read that older WD HDDs are quite lacking in surge protection. Again, there are no burn marks on the chips or diodes as far as I can see with my eyes and a small magnifying glass, however I would like to ask if anyone who had experiences with this type of pcb what the chances are that the header preamp also took a hit?

4: For the de-soldering process, what kind of heat temperature and tools are recommended (iron/hot air)? I want to confirm this with the shop I'm going to give the boards to to avoid potential heat damage to the ICs, especially the smaller chips on the WD Gold drive (and with these chips would there be a special/different process?)

5: If the chipswaps don't work because of further damage, can anyone recommend a Germany based data rescue company that does not scam their customers?

6: Is there anything I haven't considered or that I am missing that would be important for a pcb swap attempt?

I tried to be as precise as possible and hope some Guru can bestow wisdom on me
Thanks for taking the time to read this guys.

We need better pictures of the PCB boards, but it should be a simple case of removing the broken diod and bridging the fuse that would have blown to get the drive working again, and without new PCB's. But get better pictures first.

Removing the diod and fuse will leave the drive without protection, so make sure the cables and power supply are 100% working correctly before powering up the drive otherwise it will destroy the PCB.

Alright I return with good news and bad news:

The good news: Both Seagate and WD Red came back to life and I've recovered the important data.
I can confirm that the Seagate A/B Revs are compatible with the 10071520 boards, which is something I thought I should post here as a source for others.

The bad news: The WD Gold spins up now, but does not get recognized. I hear normal reading sounds from it after it has spun to speed and then it starts to idle with a single noticeable click every 4,5 seconds.
I found this https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com ... f5fxzS.pdf and some other sources which describe the problem and say that this might be a normal feature, Preventative Wear Leveling, and read many posts that claim stuckage or failure in the head assembly at this point.
I am only guessing here from rom chips not being in place correctly, hence the detection issue, to mechanical failure with something in the read/write heads.
Luckily the data on that drive is not too important, mostly program installs and settings and saved CC projects that would be an effort to rebuild but not critical.


Is anyone familiar with this type of failure and could shed some light on this?

Sorry a small correction on the WD Issue since i can't edit the earlier post anymore.
The click sounds go as following: Double heartbeat like (click-click), 2 seconds, double heartbeat click, 1 second, click, 5 seconds, click, 5 seconds, click and repeat.
Drives spin up and make normal read noises as to be expected, after around ~8 minutes the drive shuts itself down and spins down.

It looks like the Gold drive has an internal fault. That said, the PCB has two levels of protection, so I can't understand how the overvoltage was able to defeat both. The first level is a fuse and TVS diode, while the second level is a current limited switch. The ROM soldering must be OK, otherwise the drive wouldn't spin.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Gold wd drive is CCB family with high protection and CPU internal keys. Not original PCB, most probably, wont help. Need to repair original one.

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Angel Data Recovery

Thanks, that explains everything. Now the OP needs to undo the ROM transplant ...

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Yeah thats what was bugging me as well, I expected the old drives not to survive the overvoltage compared to the enterprise grade one.


That was going to be my next move, the guy that was doing the soldering for me did a really good job for a fair price and I can recommend his small shop "KM Electronics" for anyone in the Ruhr area in germany.
I'm gonna go back to him and ask to resolder it back to the board, test the diodes and resistors and then cannibalize the new board for parts. I don't really have to since there is nothing of value on the drive, but at this point its a question of my own curiosity and seeing the entire thing through

Will probably report on progress next week. Thanks for the Info guys, this adventure has been a learning experience for me

fzabkar and DR-Kiev were spot on.
We tested the board and found two shorts, resoldered the Roms and cannibalized the donor board for spare parts.
The drive now works flawlessly, SMART shows up as OK and the sounds I was hearing still appear on the drive and are confirmed for preventive wear leveling.

I went from 3 busted drives to 3 working drives within a week.
Thanks to the resources on this forum and the input I received here all data has been recovered .

Can you recall where they where for the next person that has a similar problem.

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Data Recovery Services in the UK.
https://www.usbrecovery.co.uk/

Marked them in the picture

Congrats and glad you got everything back... Remember, do your backup LOL...

It's sometimes called a "patrol seek":

https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2737562B2/en

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A backup a day keeps DR away.