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Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

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DR-Wannabe

Post subject: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 5:36

Joined: April 25th, 2012, 5:25
Posts: 5
Location: United Kingdom

Dear All Gurus,

I have a drive that i've bought that has failed. Now all it contains is Music and Video files of no importance to me, well, in the sense that the files wouldn't be difficult to find again. I'm more interested in attempting to recover this for the sake of personal training. I've done a PCB transfer before (with NVRAM Swap), but this particular case is puzzling.

Hitachi, HTS725050A9A364 - Spins up (fine), enters ready state. Attempt sector view (fail). Attempt read of total lba (fail), attempt to read SA Info (fail).

Symptoms: no clicking, no ticking, no scratching, no grinding. Everything sounds fine. The only element that is absent is any form of movement from the arm. You literally can't hear any movement.

Attempted hooking up to HD doctor, turns drive on, but can't find the hdd. Therefore can't read firmware information.

I got a feeling it must be PCB, but there is no obvious damage.

Thoughts?

Ta.

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hddlab

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 5:51

Joined: September 16th, 2006, 8:51
Posts: 141
Location: Vietnam

I guess some damage in NVRAM or its code.

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DR-Wannabe

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 7:01

Joined: April 25th, 2012, 5:25
Posts: 5
Location: United Kingdom

I'll give it a check (When HD Doctor is working again).

Thanks for the input.

Ta

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DR-Wannabe

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 7:34

Joined: April 25th, 2012, 5:25
Posts: 5
Location: United Kingdom

@hddlab think you're correct. NVRAM failed to read, ROM succeeded. Thanks for the tip, will attempt to find donor file and repair.

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Doomer

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 10:04

Joined: September 29th, 2005, 12:02
Posts: 3577
Location: Chicago

PCB is bad but NVRAM is OK

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SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

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DanR

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 10:12

Joined: November 21st, 2011, 10:05
Posts: 57
Location: England

Would replacing the PCB with an identical board and then transferring the NVRAM work?

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DR-Wannabe

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 10:22

Joined: April 25th, 2012, 5:25
Posts: 5
Location: United Kingdom

Interesting, I second DanR's question.

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labtech

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 10:28

Joined: August 18th, 2010, 17:35
Posts: 3669
Location: Massachusetts, USA

DR-Wannabe wrote:

Dear All Gurus,
...I've done a PCB transfer before (with NVRAM Swap), but this particular case is puzzling.
Ta.

Seem like you already tried that, no? Or you are saying in general as in other prior cases?

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hddguy

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 10:39

Joined: November 9th, 2006, 15:15
Posts: 2984

DanR wrote:

Would replacing the PCB with an identical board and then transferring the NVRAM work?

You already have the answer for this....

Doomer wrote:

PCB is bad but NVRAM is OK

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Doomer

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 10:45

Joined: September 29th, 2005, 12:02
Posts: 3577
Location: Chicago

you need to transfer both ROM and NVRAM

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DR-Wannabe

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 11:26

Joined: April 25th, 2012, 5:25
Posts: 5
Location: United Kingdom

labtech wrote:

DR-Wannabe wrote:

Dear All Gurus,
...I've done a PCB transfer before (with NVRAM Swap), but this particular case is puzzling.
Ta.

Seem like you already tried that, no? Or you are saying in general as in other prior cases?

In general. Understood, thanks for input

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pcimage

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 12:43

Joined: November 29th, 2006, 10:08
Posts: 7864
Location: UK

Drive spins up OK?

No movement sounds from head at all? (i.e. they do not move over the platters on initialisation)

Could also be bad preamp, in which case it's not DIY.

I know you say that SD Doctor couldn't read the NVRAM, but I'm not reading much into that! :-)

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fzabkar

Post subject: Re: Possible Simple Solution, but require feedback

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 20:14

Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 16955
Location: Australia

DR-Wannabe wrote:

I have a drive that i've bought that has failed.

What was the failure mode?

Could we see a photo of the board?

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