Is my Hard Drive dead?
Discussion
As an extreme, and to be honest, with low chance of success, you could buy another identical drive - I really mean identical, matching as many component numbers as possible - and swap over the controller board.
I say this because if it's not recognised at all, it's more likely that the PCB has failed than anything mechanical.
It's not a hard job - just some screws and ribbon cables. The hard part is sourcing one that will be compatible.
If you're interested, post up good photos of the top & underside of your drive, and I'll help you out.
I say this because if it's not recognised at all, it's more likely that the PCB has failed than anything mechanical.
It's not a hard job - just some screws and ribbon cables. The hard part is sourcing one that will be compatible.
If you're interested, post up good photos of the top & underside of your drive, and I'll help you out.
trashbat said:
As an extreme, and to be honest, with low chance of success, you could buy another identical drive - I really mean identical, matching as many component numbers as possible - and swap over the controller board.
I say this because if it's not recognised at all, it's more likely that the PCB has failed than anything mechanical.
It's not a hard job - just some screws and ribbon cables. The hard part is sourcing one that will be compatible.
If you're interested, post up good photos of the top & underside of your drive, and I'll help you out.
Doesn't work very well on recent drives - they store too much config. data on the board rather than on the platters.I say this because if it's not recognised at all, it's more likely that the PCB has failed than anything mechanical.
It's not a hard job - just some screws and ribbon cables. The hard part is sourcing one that will be compatible.
If you're interested, post up good photos of the top & underside of your drive, and I'll help you out.
marshalla said:
Doesn't work very well on recent drives - they store too much config. data on the board rather than on the platters.
Probably, but not necessarily inherently. It'll have the donor's SMART data, bad sectors and everything else, but in theory the hardware is identical. ISTR it generally worked on the 'Deathstar' drives from a while back, although I could never find the right donor to try it myself.You might also find the process of dismantling & reassembly of ribbon cables etc solves the problem, but again unlikely.
Last week I had an issue with an NTFS formatted data drive in my Windows 7 desktop. The PC was extremely slow to boot up and when I went to access the second data drive the machine locked up completely. Removing the data drive from the PC sorted all my woes - apart from losing access to my data...
Putting the SATA drive in to a USB caddy and plugging it in to the PC had the same problem - locked up.
Plugged the caddy in to a netbook running Linux Mint and the drive was immediately recognised and available. Plugged the netbook in to the LAN and copied the data off to a new drive in me desktop. I lost a few mp3s that presumably were corrupted when the NTFS system knackered itself, but otherwise dodged a bullet.
So if the OP's drive won't play when plugged in to a Windows PC, try a Linux machine if one is around.
Putting the SATA drive in to a USB caddy and plugging it in to the PC had the same problem - locked up.
Plugged the caddy in to a netbook running Linux Mint and the drive was immediately recognised and available. Plugged the netbook in to the LAN and copied the data off to a new drive in me desktop. I lost a few mp3s that presumably were corrupted when the NTFS system knackered itself, but otherwise dodged a bullet.
So if the OP's drive won't play when plugged in to a Windows PC, try a Linux machine if one is around.
trashbat said:
As an extreme, and to be honest, with low chance of success, you could buy another identical drive - I really mean identical, matching as many component numbers as possible - and swap over the controller board.
I say this because if it's not recognised at all, it's more likely that the PCB has failed than anything mechanical.
It's not a hard job - just some screws and ribbon cables. The hard part is sourcing one that will be compatible.
If you're interested, post up good photos of the top & underside of your drive, and I'll help you out.
Photos as requested:I say this because if it's not recognised at all, it's more likely that the PCB has failed than anything mechanical.
It's not a hard job - just some screws and ribbon cables. The hard part is sourcing one that will be compatible.
If you're interested, post up good photos of the top & underside of your drive, and I'll help you out.
Doctor Volt - will give that article a read, thanks
Ta.
If you search for DA4725, or even better DA4725 and DA3872, you find that you can get hold of PCBs. See for example this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PCB-Hitachi-HTS547550A9E...
Physical replacement should be simple enough, just a Torx screwdriver. However, as others point out, even the exact right replacement board might never work, and that's assuming the board is the problem in the first place.
If it were me, I would be tempted to spend the £50 on that as an experiment, because at least you can sell the board on again.
If you search for DA4725, or even better DA4725 and DA3872, you find that you can get hold of PCBs. See for example this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PCB-Hitachi-HTS547550A9E...
Physical replacement should be simple enough, just a Torx screwdriver. However, as others point out, even the exact right replacement board might never work, and that's assuming the board is the problem in the first place.
If it were me, I would be tempted to spend the £50 on that as an experiment, because at least you can sell the board on again.
Edited by trashbat on Wednesday 11th February 20:21
Most HDD boards have the BIOS (ROM or NVRAM chip) which includes the unique data to access the HDD system area. If the BIOS information is not compatible with your HDD, there is no way to read the HDD's data. Because of this, we should use the original PCB's BIOS when we swap PCB
Found the above @Google
Good Luck
Found the above @Google
Good Luck
I can tell you - so in this picture:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PCB-Hitachi-HTS547550A9E...
in the top left hand corner, there's a chip with four legs on each side. That's the BIOS chip. You would need to swap that over, which requires someone good at fine soldering. This isn't too hard to come by.
However, before you do any of that, if it still doesn't show up at all in the PC's BIOS with the new board, I imagine your chances aren't very good. Someone else might know better.
There's a video on techniques here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn2eL4o-6Eo
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PCB-Hitachi-HTS547550A9E...
in the top left hand corner, there's a chip with four legs on each side. That's the BIOS chip. You would need to swap that over, which requires someone good at fine soldering. This isn't too hard to come by.
However, before you do any of that, if it still doesn't show up at all in the PC's BIOS with the new board, I imagine your chances aren't very good. Someone else might know better.
There's a video on techniques here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn2eL4o-6Eo
Edited by trashbat on Friday 13th February 15:44
Doctor Volt said:
Woody3 said:
Photos as requested:
Doctor Volt - will give that article a read, thanks
Good luck, I hope you get sortedDoctor Volt - will give that article a read, thanks
Woody3 said:
Thanks. Will get a set ordered.
Doctor Volt - thanks for that. Would you be able to advise how to do that if I find out it isn't compatible?
You need to find someone that is very good - PCB Technician?Doctor Volt - thanks for that. Would you be able to advise how to do that if I find out it isn't compatible?
Here is some more information I just found
HITACHI first uses NVRAM as the storage media for its key parameters and adopts one very important feature: Random Beginning Position of SA. Each HDD takes a random address as its SA (Serve Area) beginning position (basically we can say in this new tech every HDD has a unique firmware beginning position address). This unique “Random Beginning Position of SA” for each HDD is to be saved in the NVRAM of itself, which means each HDD can work with its original NVRAM only, just like one key opens one lock only
Found the above here - http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?t=8262&...
Thats an IDE HD in the picture, things will very likely be different for Hitachi SATA HD
I will Google about for a while
OK I have found a better article for you, this is a SATA HD fix, read all of it, the OP does fix the HD in this. It is mentioned that the NVRAM must be changed
http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?t=21097&...
Good Luck
http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?t=21097&...
Good Luck
Below is a link for a DIY job and it worked
There is no way this job is for someone that is not very experienced as there is too much to lose
http://hmmd.blogspot.gr/2011/12/fixing-dead-hard-d...
Credit where its due - Great job it worked
There is no way this job is for someone that is not very experienced as there is too much to lose
http://hmmd.blogspot.gr/2011/12/fixing-dead-hard-d...
Credit where its due - Great job it worked
^ That's a good bunch of finds
To elaborate on what I was saying earlier, mismatched NVRAM - not bothering to swap the chips - shouldn't necessarily result in the drive not showing up in the BIOS. It probably won't let you access files, but it should appear. Drives still appear when they are mechanically knackered, after all. That's why I say it's probably worth trying without that stage.
As for swapping the chip, anyone au fait with working on small electronics ought to be able to do it. It's a normal enough job, in a fairly isolated bit of the board. Look for hobbyists, repairers or ask around on here - PH usually turns up the goods. Me, I'm strictly software!
To elaborate on what I was saying earlier, mismatched NVRAM - not bothering to swap the chips - shouldn't necessarily result in the drive not showing up in the BIOS. It probably won't let you access files, but it should appear. Drives still appear when they are mechanically knackered, after all. That's why I say it's probably worth trying without that stage.
As for swapping the chip, anyone au fait with working on small electronics ought to be able to do it. It's a normal enough job, in a fairly isolated bit of the board. Look for hobbyists, repairers or ask around on here - PH usually turns up the goods. Me, I'm strictly software!
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