Likelihood of a hard drive PCB replacement working?

Question

I have a 1.5TB Seagate 7200.11 that died. The platter still spins up initially when attached to a machine, but then the drive clicks and spins down. Then the cycle repeats. I've found a few sites that sell replacement PCBs, however I don't know if the PCB is the issue, or something else. Given the symptoms above, is it at all likely that a PCB replacement would help? If not, I won't waste my money on the PCB replacement.

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Note: I put the drive in an external ESATA controller and tried hooking it up to a Linux box here at work and got some error messages in the logs. I can post them if anyone thinks it will help in determining whether a PCB swap would fix the problem I'm running into.

Answer 1

First, lots of Seagate 7200.11 drives were affected by a firmware problem, which results in drive being inaccessible. This specific problem can be solved by a firmware flash, which can be done using a special cable & adapter, but it is not for the faint of heart. If you have this specific problem, you might try fixing it yourself, or maybe RMA disk to Seagate.

Second, generally speaking replacement of PCB board is possible, but complicated. You need to reflash the firmware, copy data from old PCB to the new one, PCB must be from the same model and series, etc:

Firmware is unique to the PCB this controls calibration and track information so it is very rare to be able to interchange the same model PCB with one that has another firmware revision.

My advise is: if your data on that disk is worth more than several thousand dollars, it is worth going to a professional data recovery company. If not, then messing with the PCB replacement will most probably not be successful.

Answer 2

If you need to get some data off the disk really badly, then you could try the PCB replacement. If not, I would say that it's not worth it and you should just replace the drive.

Answer 3

My understanding is that the answer is "no". The hard disk controller is more than just a controller, it keeps track of SMART, bad sectors, and other stuff that I couldn't get a hardware recovery company to reveal ("that is our IP").

So putting another PCB on a drive only works in a small percentage of cases - and that is even if you can get hold of the exact same controller with ideally the same firmware revision.

The clicking sound is ominous, and I take it to indicate a mechanical issue of some kind. I think you may have to just accept the loss.

If you have another drive that is the same model, you could try the pcb swap if you are happy to sacrifice the other drive (again, just my understanding, but it seems that you can mess with the controller swapping it to another drive to the point that it may well not work if you put it back on the old drive).