I'm looking into ordering an infrared rework station for doing BGA chips. I had a 1TB WD drive come in that has been blown to pieces on the bottom corner where the TVS diode used to be located. It literally melted the plastic on that corner and even damaged the pins for the power connector. 3 other chips where also damaged, and even the pads are gone for those. I'm not sure if they hooked this thing up to a nuclear reactor or tried to send it back in time with a 1.21 gigawatt lightning strike, but something bad happened.

Anyway, being that the board is so damaged and all of the adaptives are stored in the BGA marvel chip, I'm going to need to actually transfer that chip itself. Has anyone ever done these with just an air soldering station? I haven't tried it yet, but I may give it a shot just to see. I have about 60 of these boards I could practice on first, but it doesn't seem to be a practical solution. What infrared rework stations do you recommend?

Hi, I remember reading this, http://forum.hddguru.com/what-smd-station-you-recommend-t16812.html#p114922.

Dont have one yet, seriously thinking of this http://www.zeph.com/bgarework_stations_systems_qfn_smd_hot_air_repair.htm

This is not really necessary. The adaptive info can be recovered from the service area. The service area can be accessed without the native PCB and original ROM can (in most cases) be restored.

Unless this is something you specifically want to try??