Here's my story, hoping to find some help. Some water spilled on my laptop, and it would not boot. I removed the drive and tried connecting it to another laptop via usb enclosure. It made a clicking sound for a few seconds, then stopped. The drive is not recognized by My Computer. An IT guy at work mentioned swapping PCB boards can sometimes allow the drive to work so I can pull some of my data from it. Tried ordering the same drive (only the model# matched, have learned much more since then). Swapped the boards and hooked it up again in the enclosure. This time, there was no clicking at all, and the computer recognized the usb and began installing drivers. However, the drive still did not show up in My Computer. It was, however, recognized in Disk Management and Device Manager. I have since researched and learned much more about PCB matching and transferring chips, etc.

Does anybody have any input, and do you think a proper PCB swap could actually work? Found a board on donordrives.com that matches very close. Considering trying them, taking it to a local place to see if they can tell me what could be wrong with the drive in hopes of possibly figuring out a way to retrieve the data, anybody have any recommendations (other than backup more often, that doesn't help me now. lol)

Toshiba 1 TB
The model# is MQ01ABD100
The Drive rev is AAD AA10/A002D
The full HDD # is HDKBB96D0A02 S
Main controller chip# 88i9317-RAI2
Made in China.
Board also has the numbers 03A0 and G003138A.

Yes, I will get a picture posted. Is there anything in particular you are looking to see? I can't seem to get a very good focused picture of it. lol. I also tried a program called Disk Recoup. When I ran that, all I got back was "Data Error: Cyclic Redundancy Check." I have posted a pic of that as well. Again, this was with the new PCB board, as it would not even recognized the drive with the original PCB. I have also included pics of the Toshiba drive showing up in Device Manager and Disk Management. In Disk Management it is Disk 1 Unknown, and again, this is with the swapped PCB, and the drive does not show up at all with the original PCB.

I think this might be your ROM chip that must be transferred to the new PCB. But you need to send up a better image to be sure. Also, be very careful when removing the chip, they are very sensitive and break easily. I learned that t he hard way.

Shane

Thanks for all of your help so far. Will this image work, or is it the numbers on it you are trying to see?

And no, that certainly wouldn't be anything I would try myself. I would take it to somebody, or send it off to a place like donordrives.com. They seem to be a good source to match PCB's and swap chips from what I understand?

IC602 is your ROM chip, it MUST be swapped.

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http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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Thank you all again for your assistance. Can I ask this...what does it mean, if anything, that when I put a new PCB on the drive, that even though I couldn't read anything from it, that is still showed up in Disc Management and Device Manager? I'm hoping it means something positive, and that my data is likely recoverable if I can get a matching PCB with ROM chip swap.

I'm thinking of sending this to donordrives to perform. Are they pretty highly recommended, or are there others worth considering? Also, would it be wise to send my entire hard drive, or just the PCB?

Thank you again for the input.

DON'T send your hard drive.

I no longer recommend Donor Drives.

See ...

viewtopic.php?t=25524&start=20
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/29438 ... ment-again

Instead I suggest you engage either of the following suppliers.

http://www.onepcbsolution.com/
http://www.hdd-parts.com/

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Just get the PCB board from whoever and then do the things step by step with everybody here. sending everything at once will cause confusion and could make matters worse. All you need at this stage is the PCB board.

I've contacted four PCB services and Donor Drives has been by far the most responsive. I also seem to not be able to find anyone around me who can or will do a chip swap. I'm figuring I'll just send my PCB into them (not the whole drive) and they can supply the PCB and do the swap.

I suppose that would be the wise thing to do. If the drive can only do one of two things, work when the new PCB board is attached, or not. If you send the drive in, it will only add to the cost and when they check it, they will only say the same thing that you yourself will find out when you try it for yourself.

In theory, the drive should work if its only been a water spill on the pcb. By the way, do you have a closer image of the PCB. there seems to be some damage to the upper left of the board under the motor controller chip.

It actually does look like it from that pic, doesn't it? Just got home and looked and took another picture. Here is a closeup of the area. Appears to be just fine. Yeah, I sent pics of my hard drive and PCB to four different places to see if they could match, Donor Drives was the only one to even respond to me. I'll likely be sending it in tomorrow for the chip swap.

Hi,

I just completed reading the threads in this post that has my hope someone can guide me on my problem. I have a Toshiba 1TB MQ01ABD100 drive where drive suddenly stopped being recognized by bios. Message "No media found." I then attached drive with a USB kit to my desktop; same result. In each case I can hear the drive spinning without any noise. Just no activity.

I researched to find a common problem with Toshiba drives seems to be PCB failure. Hence, I became a referral to Donor Drives who are here in my home town. I purchased donor PCB and expected the IC602 rom swapped to transfer the firmware. I understand this drive requires this step. I bought PCB from Donor Drives though I am suspicious that company did not swap rom. New PCB came in mail and next day I got email drive could not be repaired. They offered recovery though I chose to get drive back.

I powered up drive to hear platters spinning as before. I then swapped new PCB with USB kit hookup to hear clicking when powers up. Immediately shut down and reinstalled original PCB where drive has platters running smoothly again (no clicking.). Sorry so winded. Wanted full color to situation So, I read I may have two failures ? Is the clicking the result of incorrect firmware or would it be head related i.e. Pre-amp issue? Would swapping the rom chip still be recommended or does clicking bring a more damaging problem to surface.? I would like to salvage data on this drive, if possible, and within reason. Thanks.

@ssbbidask
Likely it is not a PCB problem. Firmware and bad sectors are more likely the issues.

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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

+1

The ROM chip sounds like it was never swapped to the new board, hence why the drive clicks with the new board.
Most likely a firmware problem coupled with bad sectors / degraded surface.

I'm afraid you will need to take your drive to a pro for recovery there is not much that can be done here DIY.

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