Hello, my HDD was making a weird noise a few days ago so I decided to take it apart.

I purchased a matching donor and swapped the board on the back. The disk no spins with no noise but unfortunately it cannot be recognized by Windows.

Do I need to swap the ROM chips as well?

This is more of a DIY and learn type of project. Data is backed up onto a different drive. I have nothing to lose but just want to try fixing it.

Thank you in advance.
Sam

How would you describe the noise? Clicking or Buzzing?

Don't waste your time swapping PCB's and ROM until you diagnose the fault correctly.

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Data Recovery Ireland

The drive would spin up good but it would click....click....click about 3 seconds between the click.

Ive already swapped the board and that got rid of the clicking.

My problem is I was stupid enough to OPEN the cover and expose the disk inside to dust.

I covered it up and plugged it in as an external HDD and windows 7 DID recognize the drive but never showed in my computer or in dskmgt.

Does not seem important to play around with on this one. If you purchased another drive use it and leave the one you opened up to the trash. You say data is not important and it is backed up. So why worry about this drive especially if you have a new one or one that matches your broken one. Use it and go on.

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Iorana Haraharaini