hddmania, I am not trying to cut corners... I simply dont want to pay someone 1000 - infiniti dollars for a 10 minute fix. Lots of people are in business to make money and that is understandable, but when they see a sucker coming and they take advantage of this person, then that's not understandable... Kinda like the old story about the lady going to a mechanic shop...

If you had my parts in your hands and tested them, then I would have no reason to doubt you, because I am guessing that this is your expertise. So of course I would believe you.

If the U12 is no good, then chances are that the preamp is no good too? Is that what you are saying?

What kind of tools do you mean? Mulitester? I have 30,000 worth of Automotive type tools and that is not my profession. Just a past passion I had... I built many engines for friends at no cost to them because again they were less fortunate and could not afford to pay a mechanic 1000 bucks to do a 4 hour job.

Since I put the chip up for sale, someone else may give you a better counter offer!!!

But make sure it's a cash sale, because I can hear that charge-back train comming from far far away

Hey Eli, your U12 chip is more than likey still working. If it was just the chip, when you transplanted that chip on a new PCB, it should have worked for you... Reprogramming the U12 chip will take far more than 10 minutes and yes an indivisual chip is cheap but you have to buy so many of them at a time and have to pay S&H and keep thoese chips in right condition to make them last.

Internal use wise, I reuse these chip, but if I sell them, it will be a brand new chip just for YOU!!!

hddmania, thanks again for your opinion.

ELI, from what I have read I would be leaning towards the preamp. I would not need to read any more of the post than burnt motor controller. Over half of the WD drives that I receive in that condition get the heads replaced. Some of the people here have far more experience with them than I do and their processes may be different. I take the ROM and copy it to the donor (the equivalent of your u12 solder job). Attempt to access the drive. If that fails, the next step 99% of the time is head replacement. I really would not have posted to this, but I saw the reference to automotive work. Since it was my prior trade it is near and dear to my heart. Take an example close to it; Lets say you have the knowledge to reprogram a PCM ROM to get a little more fuel mileage, or more horsepower. Not the off the shelf reprogramming tool, but putting the chip in an eeprom programmer and attacking the code with a hex editor. Would you tell your friend or relative over the phone how to do it themselves? Take into account the possibility that the fuel mixture is constantly lean and burns out $1000 in catalytic converters. Would you feel responsible to the person that you helped?

I understand your motives for posting are to avoid overpaying for a "10 minute job"(there is no such thing). In your mind the only way to know that you are not overpaying is to know what the problem is. The reason everyone here keeps saying "send it to a pro" is because that is the cheapest, most reliable method of getting your data back. Now, if you would like to truly learn how to recover your data, that would be a far better use of this forum. Get some old drives, play around, and ask questions. Everyone here is great, and will answer provided they know they are being responsible with their knowledge.

On the other hand you can sell some of your $30k in tools and get immediate gratification.

phishin_ca, Thank you for the opinion.

Yes I truly wanted to know what the problem was and I also wanted to fix it for myself as well.

As you know from being a mechanic... Rebuilding an engine is very easy and almost anyone can do it with a bit of practice and a guide on how to put an engine together... When you have a bit more experience, there is other tricks that we have and learn and not to say that we won't share them with people, it just comes natural to us to do them and I guess we dont remember to tell someone to make sure to do this or do that... Or trouble shooting a problem... A non car guy goes to a garage and they diagnose it for him, usually by testdriving... (Not todays cars... they need a scope or code reader.) Then they tell him whats wrong and he decides to go home and fix it himself. Whether its to save a few dollars or to have self gratification, I guess that is his choice.

Anyhow, my point is that I am here to learn how to fix it for self gratification and also save the money. I mean for the price of the recovery, I can buy a really good computer. LOL! I can live without the data, so its not a case of I would be out thousands of dollars because of it... It would just be nice to have it.

Which in turn brings me here... It would be great to get knowledge from people that have done this sort of work before and that are willing to give me help... Noone owes me anything and I dont expect everyone to help, but there is a lot of guys on this forum that have experience with fixing hard drives and seem to know what they are doing. So again, that is why I am here. I guess there is a lot of troubleshooting involved and I have done quite a bit already to try to figure it out and I posted here originally for answers on which way to go next. (If there was anything that a normal guy can do at home, without having all the tools to fix it.) I have learned that with some practice, its not so hard to change a head... I actually watched some videos on it now as well and I am confident that I can do it, but I need to get one or 2 other drives that I dont care about and try the head swap and see whats involved with it hands on. Sure it looks easy in a video, thats because the guy doing it has done many and has the experience...

I learned a lot more about hard drives now. I have had some guys PM me with some great ideas and they were willing to answer and question I had and they said that they are willing to answer any question that I have.

Thanks to all!

Which answer would you like to have heard? After two pages of posts on this subject it's got to be in there somewhere.

msurgeon, Yes I got lots of good info/answers and lots of knowledge, as I said in my last post. What you had just quoted from, was long ago... I got some good answers before that too, but one can never have enough opinions...

I totally disagree, but......

With such confidence, you might as well do it.



That was not too long ago.
It seems like you avoiding all of the advices given to you.

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

harddrivespecialist, I was talking about rebuilding a car motor...

I am not avoiding anything... I am taking in all the advice I am getting. I am interested in learning and understanding things.

For the sake of being polite and to not bring any more negativity to this, I will just say, read my last few posts and you will see how I thanked everyone and how I appreciated the opinions.

Were you just bored and wanted to chat? LOL!

This is nothing like rebuilding an engine. More like rebuilding a Fuel injector (gasoline). The case is sealed and never intended to be opened. You can't find documentation easily on tolerances or functions, and one mistake ruins the device.