Replacing pcb on a HDD

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Psycho9

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Hi everyone, so my 2 tb decided to no longer be picked up by my BIOS yesterday. Based on the fact that there's no click noise and the fact that the HDD was picked up for a few seconds by my laptop through a SATA - USB converter, I'm assuming that the pcb is faulty (no dice on getting the data though, Windows wants to format it, and ubuntu did not want to pick it up when I booted into it).

Do any of you guys know where one can get a replacement pcb for a seagate hdd? Buying a new one that's the same model and swapping the pcb's is not an option due to some cash constraints. Also due to it being an OEM drive it's no longer under warranty.
 
Eish Seagate drives. Sorry bud hope you get what you are looking for
 
Swapping the PCB is tata-ma-chance.
What many don't know is that its a 50-50 because the electronics contains calibration constants specific to those platters, and an error map specific to the platters in the casing.

It does work, but don't expect to recover all the data.

Hi everyone, so my 2 tb decided to no longer be picked up by my BIOS yesterday. Based on the fact that there's no click noise and the fact that the HDD was picked up for a few seconds by my laptop through a SATA - USB converter, I'm assuming that the pcb is faulty (no dice on getting the data though, Windows wants to format it, and ubuntu did not want to pick it up when I booted into it).
Click to expand...

if Windows wants to format it, it means it cannot read the partition information, that could likely be a bad sector on that particular location of the disk. I would recommend you run gparted on that drive and report what you get. Use a live CD for this.

Also, I have been in a similar situation, and I plan never to endure it again. This is why I keep MULTIPLE backups of the same info.
 
If drive is spinning, 99.9% the PCB is not the fault. Fault will be either firmware problems, degraded media (too many bad sectors) or bad head/heads.

If it's spinning up, stays spinning and not clicking, then most likely you had bad sectors in the service area (which holds firmware), so firmware cannot load, drive does not come into ready state and your machine cannot detect it. You'll need professional recovery if you need the data. Drive will not be repairable though, only recoverable.
 
SouthBit said:
If drive is spinning, 99.9% the PCB is not the fault. Fault will be either firmware problems, degraded media (too many bad sectors) or bad head/heads.

If it's spinning up, stays spinning and not clicking, then most likely you had bad sectors in the service area (which holds firmware), so firmware cannot load, drive does not come into ready state and your machine cannot detect it. You'll need professional recovery if you need the data. Drive will not be repairable though, only recoverable.
Click to expand...

It depends on the drive... the drives I have, all have firmware in external FLASH.
In theory it should be possible for the OP to recover from that, by using a utility from the drive manufacturer to restore the firmware... probably again 50-50 chance.
 
I'm confused though, you say it's not detected in the BIOS, but Windows wants to format it. If Windows is detecting it, then it will be showing in the BIOS.

If Windows is detecting it and wants to format it, then you're suffering from many bad sectors as the drive cannot read its MBR.
 
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Koosi said:
It depends on the drive... the drives I have, all have firmware in external FLASH.
In theory it should be possible for the OP to recover from that, by using a utility from the drive manufacturer to restore the firmware... probably again 50-50 chance.
Click to expand...

This is not something the OP can do unless he wants to risk it with ddrescue or something similar. If drive is detected in BIOS but not an OS, the drive will have issues with reading LBAs (sectors) due to degraded magnetic media or head issues. If it's not detected in the BIOS then there will be a firmware issue, once again most likely caused by firmware modules not being read due to bad sectors in service area. He cannot get a utility to 'restore the firmware', firmware is located on the platters themselves. Hard drives are not like cellphones, firmware can't just be flashed unfortunately.
 
SouthBit said:
I'm confused though, you say it's not detected in the BIOS, but Windows wants to format it. If Windows is detecting it, then it will be showing in the BIOS.

If Windows is detecting it and wants to format it, then you're suffering from many bad sectors as the drive cannot read its MBR.
Click to expand...

I removed the drive from my pc and connected it via a sata - usb adapter to the pc when it was picked up by windows again.

The data on the drive consists mostly of my steam library, with a few GB's worth of notes and things I need/use for uni.

I'll try using gparted tonight when it finally finishes it's download.
 
SouthBit said:
This is not something the OP can do unless he wants to risk it with ddrescue or something similar. If drive is detected in BIOS but not an OS, the drive will have issues with reading LBAs (sectors) due to degraded magnetic media or head issues. If it's not detected in the BIOS then there will be a firmware issue, once again most likely caused by firmware modules not being read due to bad sectors in service area. He cannot get a utility to 'restore the firmware', firmware is located on the platters themselves. Hard drives are not like cellphones, firmware can't just be flashed unfortunately.
Click to expand...

Will see about that... you are just punting your services here trying to make a buck. I did notice your sig.
If the NSA are capable of loading malware in there, then it is do-able.

I have found a drive in my bins, that has no flash, so the firmware is on a hidden track on the media, like you say. I will now set up a hacking experiment to see if I can actually do this. Drive in question is a Seagate Barracuda.
 
Koosi said:
Will see about that... you are just punting your services here trying to make a buck. I did notice your sig.
If the NSA are capable of loading malware in there, then it is do-able.
Click to expand...
Arguing on this issue doesn't make sense. Show us how you can do it, it will be relevant.
Koosi said:
I have found a drive in my bins, that has no flash, so the firmware is on a hidden track on the media, like you say. I will now set up a hacking experiment to see if I can actually do this. Drive in question is a Seagate Barracuda.
Click to expand...
Perhaps you should be aware that some controller chips do have internal flash memory (or mixed flash and mask ROM), it is why external flash is not present. Besides, in all cases firmware is loaded from the platters, on PCB there is only a small boot code.
 
Koosi said:
Will see about that... you are just punting your services here trying to make a buck. I did notice your sig.
If the NSA are capable of loading malware in there, then it is do-able.

I have found a drive in my bins, that has no flash, so the firmware is on a hidden track on the media, like you say. I will now set up a hacking experiment to see if I can actually do this. Drive in question is a Seagate Barracuda.
Click to expand...

No, I'm not here to 'make a buck', I'm here to give useful information to the OP. We are quite well known on the forum here in terms of giving HDD advice when people have problems, assisting with DIY attempts if people want to risk it etc. Quite often forum members do send their drives to us for recovery, but that's not our objective here. Your idea of my intentions is incorrect.

With regards to your experiment with your Seagate, you are speaking of drives you found in your bin with 'no flash'. I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Are you talking about the external 8-legged ROM that is used to initialise the drive when it powers up before the rest of the firmware is loaded from the platters? Some drives have external ROM, some have internal to the MCU.

Here's a photo I took now to show you an example:
2z3w67t.jpg


The PCB on the left from an old 320GB WD has no external ROM at U12, it's internal to the MCU. The PCB on the right from a 3TB WD has an external ROM at U12. That's merely a tiny portion of firmware that is required in order to allow the heads to read the surface so the rest of the firmware can be read. Sure, we can recover from a drive where the PCB is for whatever reason missing the original ROM on a WD as the ROM info can be rebuilt based on other firmware modules, but when you talk about new Seagates (7200.11 and on) the architecture is completely different and it becomes almost impossible.

Good luck with your 'hard drive hack'.
 
So after it not being picked up at all over the weekend I left the drive alone with the plan to get a new hdd and to somehow get most of the data I had lost eventually. Tried my luck one last time this morning when I plugged it in and my bios picked it up again :D. Getting all the data off that I can atm, but have to say that it does seems strange that it had not been picked up over the weekend and the majority of last week.
 
It happens. Now when you finish backing up you can donate the drive to:
- sajunky for further :happy: testing, :)
- Southbit for parts. I think it should be a reward for him for a presence on the forum and good advice.
 
So it's 9 hours later and the hdd is still being picked up and I'm still able to retrieve the data. Ran Seatools' S.M.A.R.T. check on the drive, came back with the drive being healthy, aside from it still possibly being the pcb that gave the initial problems, could there be anything else?
 
Maybe use it
But don't use it for critical storage
Can't trust it any more :(
 
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