Hello,

I wonder if for replacing the PCB of a WD Element drive, finding a board with the same drive model and using the same firmware would permit to avoid any chip transfer.

On Wikipedia is written "The sector lists are also stored on various chips attached to the PCB, and they are unique to each hard drive."

But would this suffice to prevent the drive to work when the PCB is simply swapped but use the same firmware ?
I'm telling about getting access to clone the data, circumventing the defective sectors if necessary. Not about using the drive on a daily basis after the recovery.

My main concern is about the drive to initialize correctly to allow the recovery.

Thanks.

It's possible to read rom on board via eprom only if there are not short circuit on Vcc rom pin or on any other rom pins.
If there are shorts, then he would need to unsolder it to be able to read via eprom.

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My firmware database:
https://mega.nz/folder/O01DkBRI

Thank you Spildit for mentionning the microjogs.

I read on deepspar.com, I read: "If the difference in microjogs is significant, the heads cannot operate at all, making these heads incompatible"

But I assume the difference in microjogs could also be small or at least acceptable to permit data recovery ?

The fact is that I could find a drive with the exact same parameters.
It's quite expensive (~160 $ + 20$ shipping), but could be worth if I don't have desolder/resolder the firmware chip, or if there is a high probability that I don't have to make it.

The alternative would be a circuit board (~55$ + 15$ shipping), from the same drive model, but with different firmware, so that I would have to desolder/resolder the firmware chip.

If the firmware chip has to be transfered in all cases, I don't understand why some vendors mention the firmware number.

Hi Spildit,

Thank you for your proposal.

But the drive is a WD10JMVW, which has an USB connector.
So, the firmware could not be reprogrammed with WDR Demo, unless I use a compatible circuit board with a SATA interface or bridging to the SATA connectors on the circuit board.

Another issue is the short time available for this recovery.