Hello, I'm a complete noob in this world and until today I thought that having two hdds with he same name was enough to exchange the PCBs even if they were different.

Turns out my friend's MQ01UBD100's PCB (g003250a) is broken. I read in this same forum something about the usb 2.0 of macbook pros breaking some of these boards, and that's exactly the laptop he's got.

Anyways I installed my MQ01UBD100's PCB (g3448a) on the disk and nothing happened.

And my question is, is there a way to get it to work? I already bought the g003250a board from china but it takes 40 days to arrive or so and my friend needs the data for work so if there's a way to get my PCB to work with his drive I'd like to know.


Thanks and pardon my English.

May be you bought a damaged hdd?

My HDD works perfectly fine. My friend's is broken and when I put my HDD's PCB ion it it just lights up and starts running but doesn't work.

You cannot transfer Toshiba HDD PCB's between each other, the ROM on the PCB contains 100% unique info for the drive itself, even the serial number.

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So the only option is to buy a new one right? Alright, thanks. I'll order it and expect the problem was the PCB, which according to that thread I was talking about, seems to be pretty common.

Alright, thanks man.

One last question, if I buy the exact PCB, that's it right? I don't have to replace any chip or anything else, right?

Pcimage is saying that the "ROM" chip (IC602) of the patient PCB must be transferred to the donor PCB. That's because no two ROMs have the same information.

Some PCB suppliers include a free "firmware transfer" service, eg http://www.hdd-parts.com. I suggest you avoid those that don't.

BTW, I would try a USB 3.0 port. USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 use different pins. Perhaps you'll get lucky.

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No, you misunderstand.

Each PCB has UNIQUE data in the ROM including the serial number, as well as other totally unique info, absolutely specific that one drive. No two are the same.

If you want to get another PCB to work with a Toshiba drive you MUST transfer the ROM chip over (IC602) otherwise it won't work.

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@fzakbar.. You must have been typing your post as I was typing mine but your got posted first!

@OP.. If you want to send the PCB's to me I'll switch the chips for free, just pay th postage.

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Oh, and by the way what makes you think the PCB is "broken"?

Is the drive totally dead, not a peep? Not spinning at all?

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it spins and everything, but it doesn't make any noise. And also the pcb light blinks all the time, both in usb 2.0 and 3.0. I've tried accessing the drive with testdisk and Active partition recovery and they just get stuck, also when I'm going to format the drive it just gets stuck there.

Then almost (99%+) certainly the PCB is fine, the problem is elsewhere (media issues, fw damage or suspect head).

It may be possible that there is a bad connection on one of the USB data lines, but that's a long shot.

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How can that be fixed when everything gets stuck while trying to read the drive?. I've looked at usb pins and they all look fine.

As I said, a bad connection on the USB connections was a long shot.

It's 100x more likely to one of the other things I mentioned. None of which you can deal with as the drive stands without specialist equipment and knowledge, sorry to say.

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I can't wait for these type of discs to become obsolete by the SSDs. So unreliable. Anyways, thank you very much, I will tell my friend the sad news.

Don't be too hasty to curse HDD's!

SSDs aren't as reliable as they're cracked up to be, plus they are a total nightmare to recover from when/if they go wrong. In fact nigh on impossible if it's a Sandforce based SSD

We don't put ANY valuable data on SSD's in our lab, we use them for boot drives and program installation (for speed). Any real data goes to a normal HDD (or usually a raid array).

If your friend needs the data, then it shouldn't be too expensive to recover the data from the bad drive. Given that it's not making any untoward noises, it should be fairly straightforward for someone with the right equipment and skills. A few hundred Euro at most.

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