Hello all, great forum!

I have a Seagate 2TB drive about 6 months old that stopped working during a HDD swap from server to pc. I tested the drive board, there was no power to the drive motor side so assumed the drive was ok but the drive board was kaput. Due to the nature of the information on there I was possibly the most careful handling this drive I have ever been. It has never been dropped, tapped etc. etc.

I ordered a new drive board with the same firmware, from the exact same device with same rev number/part code.

I installed it and I am getting a tick tick noise now but ten ticks in a row and the drive restarts tries searching for a while and then goes ticking again.

I asked the US supplier and they said I need a ROM adaptation before my HDD will work properly. Could this be the case? And how the heck do I go about doing that? I am really loathe to part with $400 just to get a new drive working...

Who said it would be $400?

Should be nowhere near that for a simple "ROM adaptation"

You definitely need ROM transfer but it should be pretty straightforward (assuming you have the correct donor board and that the PCB is the only issue)

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My donor board I had to import from the US. Same firmware, CC34, same Board number from exactly the same batch of drives. Prices for recovery here in South Africa start around $400 and then go up

Whole recovery is one service while a ROM adaptation is another, each at different cost.
A whole recovery would obviously cost more.

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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

Go to www.southbit.co.za ask for Nick.

He will do this for you at a very fair price.

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http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

+1
Duuhhh, user is in South Africa, should have of thought this myself. OP, you will be in good hands.

Best wishes

@Northwind - meant to post, not 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

Southbit is who I was offered the R3950 price tag from...

Is this not something I can do. I have extensive PC knowledge but HDD's is a new avenue.

It depends. If you are 100% sure that it is only PCB at fault, then you could potentially transfer adaptives yourself with a hot air station. But with this there are several potential issues:

a) You damage the native ROM during the process
b) You damage the native/donor PCB during the process
c) There are underlying issues such as preamp/heads
d) At the point of failure it is possible the HDD had not enough power to park heads correctly

Ultimately it is your data so its your choice. But for the price you were quoted you would get professional diagnosis, your data would be in good hands, and recovery of all your data will be made safely with minimum risks to the media or data.

So it looks like I'm beggared either way. Thanks for all your input, much appreciated!

N

A ROM transfer should be an easy job for any TV repair shop.

The following PCB suppliers will even do it for free:
http://www.onepcbsolution.com/
http://www.hdd-parts.com/

Otherwise, if you can show us a photo of the original board, then perhaps there may be an easy, no-cost DIY solution.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.