Hi folks, Im new to the forums but I bring the tale of woe you all know

My best friend's hard disk failed the other week, he booted his box to find that the BIOS no longer detected his HDD and naturally he brought his PC through to me (im an IT systems engineer by trade.) The drive itself is a Maxtor DiamondMax 22 (SATAII, 500gb) and after checking Maxtor's forums, It seems that the firmware on it has failed (3+ pages of people threatening to eat the children of Seagate's employees' for making a massively faulty drive lol) and yes, I have already highlighted the fact he should have backed up his files. (he literally has the cliche content on it such as his child's baby photos etc) I am now the proprietor of this problem.

The drive specs;

Original:
Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax22 SATAII
Size: 500gb
Serial No: 9QM6ZX9B
Part No: 9GT154-325
Firmware: MX15
Date Code: 09113
Site Code: KRATSG

The disk will not read in the bios, however spins up normally and sounds rather healthy mechanically. I have bought another disk off ebay as a PCB donor however this did not work, the drive does the "shhhhh tickup... shhhhh tickup" noise that after reading up on the subject i believe is a power calibration error. (Its not mech fail as both disks spin up fine with their respective PCB's)

The donor disk (I have highlighted the differences between this and the original in red)
Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax22 SATAII
Size: 500gb
Serial No: 9QM5C91F
Part No: 9GT154-325
Firmware: MX15
Date Code: 09093
Site Code: KRATSG

Now, I am hopeful that I can exchange some parts from the working disk onto the original to get it working for at least long enough to clone it to another disk. I have quite a bit of experience soldering PCB's so im up to the job, however now to the question...

Which parts do I swap?

I have attached to this post a picture of the original PCB (I can provide an ultra high res shot of the same if needed) can someone please highlight the firmware chip for me as well as any other parts that would be required to swap back to the original PCB to make this work?

I apologise for my post no 1 being War and Peace, however I felt it necessary to provide all the details upfront to maximise my chances of success. I thank any and all of you in advance for any assistance provided.

Thanks
John

I think you need to think very carefully before attempting any work. You could very well have a problem with the SA of your drive that no ammount of parts, no matter how compatible, will help. Even if the failure is not SA related, you still need to make absolutely certain you have the correct diagnostic. Without the correct knowledge and equipment you will be unable to correctly diagnose the fault, and also unable to get the data.

I know this is not the answer you want to hear, but you are in need of professional assistance, even if just to confirm the diagnostic.

Attempting any physical repair yourself can almost certainly render the data lost for good.

Here are repair procedures for Seagate 7200.11 drives:

http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807

It appears that the procedure for a Maxtor model may be the same:

tutorial-resolve-lba-seagate-7200-bios-don-recognize-t11040.html#p70349

hard-disk-drives-data-recovery-and-repair-f1.html

See the following technical bulletin:

http://atulchitnis.net/files/seagate.pdf

Any answer is progress my friend, you are very true I am not 100% certain that the firmware is at fault. If professional assistance/data recovery is the way forward then so be it.

Re: fzabkar

Thank you I will review those links right now, every byte of information is a byte closer to win.

Thanks
John

Absolutely fantastic mate, This may not be the winner but it certianly fits the profile of the problem.

HyperTerminal... i havent seen that used for years, let alone to dial into a hard disk!!!

I will gather the required parts and attempt this. (Dont worry I am aware of the risk) I will post the results. Again thank you for providing assistance in my hour of need, you have restored my faith in the intertubes as a source of knowledge and help (rather than a source of spam and malware lol)

Is your friend also aware of the risks? I believe Seagate are offering to recover these for free.

A few pointers..

MX15 drives are affected by the firmware bug, which needs to be fixed then upgraded to MX1A.

The firmware is on the platters and NOT on the PCB

Seagate don't offer free recovery for OEM drives.

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