I am fairly certain that the PCB Rom is damaged on my clients drive. I think the sound is a calibration sound where the drive spins up and back down. For a quick test I replaced with a same model pcb spare, different fw and the calibration sound stopped but the drive wasn't mounting. I'm looking for a local place in San Diego, CA to take my drive in that has PC3000 at their local shop and can rebuild the faulty ROM for me. One place that has no reviews (sandiegodatarecovery.net) quoted $400-$700 to fix the ROM. I wanted to get the gurus' opinion before relieving this job to a stranger. Is this price acceptible and has anyone heard of this firm and/or refer to someone else locally? Much appreciated and thank you in advance.

The drive spins up and stays spinning when power is applied, and sounds normal?

How did you deduce this was a ROM problem?

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After swapping with the PCB spare it spins up and stays spinning.



I'm not certain it is.

Expect to pay the higher cost when a price range is given.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

It "could" be a PCB problem (as opposed to ROM problem) or even a fw issue, but without actually seeing the drive and listening to the sounds it's impossible to tell for sure.

If the the drive (with original PCB) spins up, makes some quiet ticking noises and spins down, then head failure is more likely.

Need proper diagnostic.

I guess their price range covers most issues. $400 sounds fair for a PCB issue, and $700 for a fw issue is not unreasonable. But I don't expect you'll get a head problem fixed on this drive for $700, so lets hope it's not that!

Maybe someone stateside on the forum can offer a diagnosis for you?

Good luck.

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If you want to play it safe and make sure that you are dealing with someone who can handle the head replacement, if needed, I recommend Jon @ DataSavers (jono-ats in the forum) in Atlanta. Yes, I know he is on the other side of the country, but he is someone that everyone on this forum would highly recommend.

Good luck!

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

+1 for Jono-ats

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PC Image Data Recovery
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