Hi, I was wondering if someone can help on a problem i have, a friends daughters laptop failed due to a hard drive failure, its a Samsung HM250HI/D removed from a Dell laptop. She is desperate to recover various photos documents etc still on the drive but could not afford sending to a data recovery service so hence the post

The PCB is blown with various components visible damaged, I have another Samsung HM250HI drive that works fine and swapped the PCB's over to see if I could recover the data. The PCB was not identical although the number was the same , one had a ESMT chip (the damaged one) and the working one had a Samsung chip. The drive powered up ok and I could hear it spinning but it was not recognised by my pc using a usb interface.

Now would I be right in thinking if I was to source a replacement pcb with a ESMT chip I might be able to recover the files she needs ?

Any help appreciated

Many thanks.

Could you upload a photo?

BTW, the ESMT chip sounds like an SDRAM, in which case there would be no need to swap it.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks for the reply, here is a photo of the board (not my one) showing the ESMT chip, I'm thinking if I find another PCB with the correct chip I may be ok to retrieve the data.

Or am I way off the mark ?

Can you post a photo of the top label of the failed disk?

Also, depending on what caused the failure, there could be additional problems that need to be recognized and dealt with.

Could we see your PCB?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

hddguy - I'm afraid its not a brilliant photo , let me know if you want me to have another go

fzabkar - I've tried to get a good photo but it's pretty bad tbh ..

Its basically identical to the first photo but with damaged components around one of the chips, I'll have another go and see if I can improve it ..

Thanks

That's correct.

Also this PCB does not have an external ROM chip, the adaptive data is inside the Marvel MCU chip, so you'll have to either find a PCB from a drive with the same Firmware version (and head map, as from memory these usually 3 head drives so they can differ from drive to drive) or seek pro assistance.

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You may be lucky, the FW version appears to be on the drive label (they usually aren't labelled with this info), although the photo is pretty blurry. So if you really wanna try DIY then you can try and find a suitable donor and try your luck!

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Hi Guys,

Many thanks for your help in making things a bit clearer now

I'll see if I can track down a replacement PCB with the same chip and firmware.

You never know i might be lucky ..

Thanks again

Smurf