Had a HDD go bad again due to power shortage. Purchased a new one via Amazon just as they came back into stock. I replaced BOTH the bios chips, the drive spins up and disk is detected but can gain no access and says 0 bytes out of 6tb. Taking a look at the motherboards of the drives, there seem to be quite a few components missing. You can also see the the original (original board which has previously been replaced) and the new replacement board have different manufacturer origins.

Original board (Thailand):


NEW replacement board (China):


STOCK photo for BIOS CHIP Loaction:



Are the components near the bios chips and others around the board necessary? Can this be the reason my drive is not loading any of the data?

Here are the missing or switched components in red:

That's interesting. Can you tell us the markings on the missing IC?

Did you check the fuses and TVS diodes on the original PCB?

Here is a similar layout:

http://users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/0B40385/TVS_diodes_fuses.jpg

Does the "repaired" HDD report SMART data to CrystalDiskInfo or some other SMART tool?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

This is the "repaired" with the china mobo:




Will check the fuses now once i locate my multimeter

The drive is sick. However, I'm wondering whether you are seeing the result of a unique encryption key in the MCU. IMO it would be best to repair the original PCB and return the ROMs.

Can you show us the hexadecimal contents of sector 0 with DMDE? That should tell us whether you are now facing an encryption issue.

https://dmde.com/

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Am unable to find another multimeter, loaned it to father. Ordering one with delivery tomorrow.

The missing components appear to constitute a UART interface. One IC is a 3.3V LDO regulator, while the other two are level shifters. Therefore, these components would have no bearing on the functionality of the replacement PCB.

https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/H5ced1cae1ee5481a9621501c49615281y/Western-digital-circuit-board-0B41785-004-0B41785-001-0B41785.jpg

BU33TD3WG, Rohm, 3.3V, 200mA, LDO regulator, marking G7+xx+xx, SSOP5:
https://wwwmouser.com/datasheet/2/348/buxxtd3wg_e-1874160.pdf

TXS0101DCKR, Texas Instruments, 1-Bit Bidirectional Voltage-Level Shifter for Open-Drain and Push-Pull Application, marking 2GO, SC70-6:
http://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/txs0101

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Your data look OK, so it's not an encryption issue.

I would use HDDSuperClone to clone your drive, and then use DMDE to recover your data from the clone.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks Fzabkar for your help, a new larger drive is on the way for the procedure. Will update with results.