Hi all, I'm seeking for a bit of assistance.
As a first poster, I'm going to introduce myself before asking.
My name is Marton, I live and work as an IT consultant in Buenos Aires. I have several years of computer experience (22). This week I had this case... A power supply failed on the 12V line frying almost everything on the PC: motherboard, optical unit, and the PC had 2 hard disks, an IBM Deskstar 80gig as the System drive (XP Pro) and a WD2000BB-00GUC0 as the Data drive. Strangely enough, the IBM was the only component that survived. I replaced the power supply, the motherboard and the optical drive. Machine booted up but gave BSOD due to motherboard swap, so I replaced the IDE driver to the regular intelide.sys, and deleted intelppm.sys to avoid another BSOD (old motherboard was Intel, new one AMD). Installed drivers, machine is up.
Data on the Data drive is important enough to get it recovered, so I started my quest.
Looked all over the net on local auction sites for this model, none up for sale. While at it, I saw that these WD drives need a ROM swap for a proper logic replacement, no problem, I have a hot air station. Checked eBay, found it, but 15~20 days is too much wait for the logic board at this time, so I had to end up going to a local shop.
At first I wanted to buy the logic board for my model. Obviously, the guy told me he could not sell me the board, but he could -for a price- put a logic board from his and recover the data for me. No repair to the drive whatsoever.
His offer sounded fair to me, I accepted.
Few hours later, he calls me and tells me that the drive started up properly but could not be mounted properly, that data recovery software will need to be used, and that the drive had some bad clusters already. To me, that sounded sniffy. Less than an hour later, I was with him at his shop. He had File Scavenger on his screen, working, with the error messages window upfront, indicating problems to read. He already recovered some MBs of files.
I dare to believe that a surge 'generated' bad clusters. After discussing a bit, he offered the option -for an extra fee- to give me the drive so I could check it myself.
When using an IDE cable, the drive detects properly but no data could be read.
Using an USB -> IDE cable, I get it to read some data but generally, data above 75% of the surface is unreadable, and below that it is erratic. On the start of the disk, the first GB to data reads perfectly, then as it goes reading, everything starts to freeze as the disk retries to read the data. But mostly no problem up to 75%.
Disk shows as "Dynamic", "Not valid", 0MB capacity on Disk Management. On HD Tune 2.55 I get an empty partition, type LDM.
Now my question, to all the HDD gurus over here: Is it possible to get the last 25% of the drive as bad by such frying?
How about being able to access some of the data via an USB -> IDE cable and nothing via the IDE cable?
And how about the strange partition type? Hmmm...
I think the problem is that even though the ROM was changed, the logic board is not compatible in model and hence the errors.
Can anyone confirm?
MANY thanks in advance!

I don't think anyone on the forum can confirm without having the drive and doing diagnosis on it. I assume you still have the original board with the original ROM ? With that board on the drive what are the symptoms ? Maybe the TVS diode got blown and needs to be removed. Many posts and much info on here about TVS. Post a pic of the original board it needs to be the full board and a good clear image.

Thanks for the reply!
The original board got really burnt i.e. not only the diodes, but also the chip that drives the motor and various transistors. I don't have it with me now for a pic
The board the guy used is of a WD2000BB-00GUA0, it has many different numbers than the original on the board itself. The confirmation I need is: can a different board like this make it work properly? Or it could happen that it partially works (like on this case)?
Being able to read data ONLY via the USB cable and not via an IDE cable makes me think it is simply not compatible...

Based on the "new" info and the other info posted the "guy" at the local PC shop didn't move the flash memory chip to the donor board so it won't work without the proper code that is on the original board. Post a pic of the burnt board when you can.

The problem most probably is and was ELSEWHERE.
The trouble is that as long as the drive worked that way, more damage has occurred to data.

If your board is similar to this one ...

http://pcb-hdd.com/images/WD1600SB-01KB ... %20PCB.jpg

... then AFAICS it has no TVS diodes.

AISI, if transistor Q8 is damaged, then the chances are that the serial flash memory ("ROM") at U12 will also be damaged.

Exactly which components were affected?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Many thanks for the replies. Attached are some pictures. Sorry if they are blurry, they were taken with a cellphone.
Fortunately, the ROM chip wasn't damaged, the guy did change it to the replacement board and the disk starts, but works as I described in original post i.e. partially, works via USB->IDE adapter but not in pure IDE, it delays reading, shows an LDM partition instead of NTFS. With surface tests it reads up to 75% of the disk and then it freezes and keeps retrying as if there are bad clusters.
To me, the problem is an incompatibility between the boards' models.
To the guy, the problem is on the heads/platters, due to the voltage peak they suffered.That was 'sniffy' to me, so that's why I ask the pros
Another possibility I'm shuffling is that the guy changed the partition type to LDM so that it would not mount under Windows... but this is just an speculation.

Thanks again!

Sorry no Flash Serial Chip "rom" on this board its contained within the large Chip "CPU" have to have Pro Tools to read the info and move to the new board. What is with the silver tape ? I hope thats not "conductive" it may have already "shorted" out the CPU

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you. That the external flash ROM exist on this board. (U12). But anyway theres media damage beside burned PCB.

My bad I was looking at the old board your correct I now see U12 on the new board

The original board has the tape because it was used to protect the components to remove the ROM. The original board was not powered up anymore. The original ROM is on the replacement board.
@unknown: is it possible to get media damage after a burn like this?
I prefer to think that after such burning, it works or it doesn't. No mid-term, but maybe I'm wrong.

Yes its possible.


Sorry but you are wrong. There is mid-term and its common on this series after burned PCB.

That's exactly the confirmation I needed. So as it is common on these models, what does really happen when such burn occurs? Is it a problem on the heads that led them to read bad clusters? Does something happen with the platters, like some magnetizing effect that generates bad sectors and delays? What about it working with the IDE->USB cable but not with a standard IDE cable?

Anyone?

No !

I see
So maybe unknown is not right... ?

I think there is a forum member here from Argentina who can probably provide immediate assistance. Off the top of my head, his member name is F_ARG. Send him a PM.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Nah nah, don't need to bother anyone. The data is already recovered.
I just wanted to know if it was normal to have such a strange crash, or if the donor board was not 100% compatible.

Since LBA reading was possible and data was recovered, then the PCB was compatible.

Power issues can cause bad sectors, but hard to tell if was the case in your situation. Hard to replicate the failure and have the same consequence results like yours.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

The strange thing is that it doesn't work on IDE at all, and that the data can be recovered with File Scavenger but the partition type is LDM so it doesn't 'mount' (under Windows at least).
That's what I see 'hard' from such a power failure. I guess the 'guy' screwed it up, unintentionally or on purpose, and that's what I wanted to confirm.