Swap Hard Drive Circuit Board

[YOCS]

I have a customers HDD that seems to have a burnt PCB . It doesn't spin up and you can smell a slight burnt stench. I remember a site that I found a while back where you can purchase HDD PCB's but, I can't find it now. Does anyone know where I can purchase one? It's a Samsung HD161HJ. Has anyone ever done this before and were you successful in getting the HDD to fire up again? Any other tips or suggestions?
Thanks!

 

[schwags]

I honestly do not know if you will be able to do this. On most modern hard drives, there is drive specific calibration information contained on the PCB. So swapping PCBs between even drives of the same model and firmware is not feasible. On older drives you could do this, but not any more. I believe that a chip swap can be done, but you need to know some pretty fancy SMD soldering skills...

Note: This is second hand information, I am a regular listener of 'my hard drive died' over at podnutz, this has been coverd a number of times by Scott Multon. I do not have first hand experience in PCB swapping.

 

[redback]

Try a different forum

HDD Guru forums are the best. Just post what you want and ask if it can be swaped or you need to swap rom chip ect. Put symptoms of drive and you'll get some diagnosis also.

Worked for me, once, just pay with paypal

 

[onetech4all]

Re:

Well, Scott Moulton says to use Ebay to find what you need for hard drive recovery.

 

[shamrin]

I have a customers HDD that seems to have a burnt PCB . It doesn't spin up and you can smell a slight burnt stench. I remember a site that I found a while back where you can purchase HDD PCB's but, I can't find it now. Does anyone know where I can purchase one? It's a Samsung HD161HJ. Has anyone ever done this before and were you successful in getting the HDD to fire up again? Any other tips or suggestions?
Thanks!

I have used PCBsolution (http://www.onepcbsolution.com/) once or twice to good results. You can find them (and others) on eBay as well.

 

[dgiles79]

I have switched hard drive pcb's before, and it worked great (same model). I was using an older PATA drive though, so i'm not sure if it still works with modern drives.

 

[itSaviours]

Just make sure that if you do swap the PCB that you get one with the exact same firmware version as well.

Admittedly it was a while back but when a WD i had fried I needed to get one with the same firmware version or i was informed it wouldn't work.