I have a Hitachi Deskstar 80 gb ATA hard drive that is physically damaged in that 2 or more of the pin contacts are broken, I suspect there is useful data stored. I have tried to make repairs without success and my question is if I were to buy another HDD of the same make and model could I swap the PCB so that it could be accessed?

It will likely require some PCB rework as well (IE: Desoldering some components from the patient board, to the new board)

I suggest you find someone who is comfortable with desoldering and soldering small components, it's easy once you practice, but also easy to screw up if your a novice.

Good luck!

Thanks for the tip but actually I am a retired electronics technician with experience soldering and desoldering but I think there may be internal component damage and just repairing it doesn't help. Sop as I asked can I replace the PCB?

A straight board swap won't work. You need to transfer the NVRAM, or its contents, to the donor PCB.

If you upload a photo, one of us will identify the component for you.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

NVRAM swap *AND* match rom version (match first two lines of the sticker on the ata connector)

It looks like the chance of finding an exact match is pretty remote maybe my best option is to find a data recovery expert, any suggestions there? Attached are pictures.
Thanks for all, Bob

I would cut the conductors for the damaged pins from your IDE cable, and then hardwire them to your PCB. Should be very easy for someone with soldering experience.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

The simple solution is to replace the broken pins if that is the only damage.