Question Seagate 7200.12 with a dead PCB

T3C

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I have an oldish Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 with a lot of data on it that I need to access. It was inside an external enclosure that I had lost the power supply to. When connecting the external case to my universal psu that I checked and doubled checked was set at 12V with the best fitting pin set to centre positive, as was written on the case of the external drive btw, it still didn't power up.

So, I thought I'd just remove the hdd from the case and just attach direct to my main work pc and just copy the files over that way as I have done with so many other hdd's in the past. I connected it just as you would any hdd via a spare sata power connector from the pc's psu and to the mb via a normal sata data cable. Upon pressing the power button on the pc there was a brief crackle from the Seagate's pcb which prompted me to turn the pc off asap. This was followed by that tell tell burnt out electrical smell coming from the poor old drive. :-(

I didn't bother turning it on and trying again as I was pretty certain the damage had already been done and that I was going to be looking at other ways to get at the data on that drive. Removing the pcb and turning it over revealed a tiny transistor or capacitor had let go of this mortal coil and gone to dead electrics heaven....RIP.

A limited bit of knowledge and a bit of Googling suggests that there could be some mileage in looking for the same revision number pcb from the same make and model hdd. This might allow access to the drive and allow for copying the data to another drive. I think I'm right in understanding that not only is it a case of swapping exact pcb but also moving the rom chip from the dead board and soldering it/replacing the rom on the new or replacement board as well.

Do any forum members have any advice or experience in doing anything similar by any chance or am I better off taking the drive to a data recovery specialist?

Many thanks in advance
 
Depends on how valuable the data on the drive is?

Me, personally, would bin that drive, buy new one and restore from backup. :smashin:
 
I wish it was that simple :-(
 
Oh.....
 
Yes, I have done it with a WD green drive 2tb drive if my memory serves me right. (Or was it a Samsung???)

Actually it could have been a Seagate.

Anyway there was a fault and I decided to buy a new drive to get the data back.

On the board as you say there is a Rom chip, now I remember this bit. The chip was relatively robust and had 7 legs but small.

I was able to unsolder both and transfer them and solder back on the board. The old drive spun up correctly and worked with the new board at this point. Ironically the drive was ok at this point but the data I had hoped was there wasn't in the end :(

I ended up swapping the Rom chips a few times and it was quite robust.

It really depends how good you soldering skills are.

If it's important data I would check how much a data recovery form would charge. There are also companies that will sell you a replacement board and do the Rom chip swap. However that doesn't mean that there isn't a fault with the motor or drives head that could be causing your board to fry.
 
I now have another Seagate drive from the same range and the same size, the pcb revision numbers are all but identical. I've done a quick swap over and the drive with the data on can be heard and felt to be working as you would normally expect. I haven't connected the sata cable yet as I thought the data would be unreadable until the rom chips had been swapped.
 
Yep drive will spin up and start with the "wrong" board, though the data will remain inaccessible.

I am not sure if I plugged mine into the computer with the wrong board as one the ROM chips were swapped I cloned the drive using a standalone disk copier and then worked off the copy. That required a further hard drive though :(
 

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