Hard Drive PCB Replacement

[CastleCrusher]

Ok, so lately I've been trying to replace my Dad's 10+ years old P4 ht Dell with my Ryzen system. Now pretty dusty would be understatement when it comes to dust but luckily all I needed to salvage form the PC was his 160 gig Samsung hard drive. My first instinct was to clean off all the dust which I did no problem but when I installed it in the Ryzen system it prevented the PC from booting and made a click click noise with IDK, about half a second in between each click. The hard drive has been mounted "upside down" in the Dell for as long as it's been in there, but I doubt my "standard" form of mounting affected anything considering most hard drives can be mounted in whatever position. I even tried putting It back into the Dell and of course XP didn't boot and instead it hung on the splash screen. I inspected the PCB and everything looked intact but when I carefully inspected the underside of the PCB, the gold contact points that go to the drive itself looked worn, some even completely gone. I would assume that this has something to do with the heads considering it corresponds to the location of that part.

 

My question is, is it possible to replace the PCB (or possibly fix the contacts) with the exact same one to possibly solve the issue of the heads moving back in forth as if their confused? If so what additional steps are required to do this? I'm kind of a noob when it comes to storage, I've had many micro sd's fail on me, another one just today actually. I know this drive is old and parts will eventually die but I'm not gonna let a decade worth of my family's data get away and the drive really should be running fine. The drive is pretty old considering it's branded under Samsung and it's model number is HD160JJ/P. Thanks in advance!

[Radium_Angel]

5 minutes ago, CastleCrusher said:

Thanks in advance!

Yes you can, but it's not as easy as just swapping parts, you have to ensure the firmware is identical as well as the controller board numbers.

*IF* you can find an identical one, then you just swap them out and off you go.

*IF* you get any of the numbers wrong, you'll likely destroy the drive, so be very very certain it's an identical board

(Did data recovery professionally some years ago...as point of reference)

 

[CastleCrusher]

3 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Yes you can, but it's not as easy as just swapping parts, you have to ensure the firmware is identical as well as the controller board numbers.

*IF* you can find an identical one, then you just swap them out and off you go.

*IF* you get any of the numbers wrong, you'll likely destroy the drive, so be very very certain it's an identical board

(Did data recovery professionally some years ago...as point of reference)

 

Yeah that's what I thought. This is a noob question but is there a way to "fix" the contacts with soldering, etc? 

[CastleCrusher]

7 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Any replacement part cost more then the 160gb drive is worth. The only rational thing to do is fixing the PCB if it is fun for you.

I did a quick search for the drives model no. and it doesn't look too bad for a replacement board.

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, CastleCrusher said:

Yeah that's what I thought. This is a noob question but is there a way to "fix" the contacts with soldering, etc? 

Yup, assuming that's the actual issue and not something else.

Step one - get some q-tips and rubbing alcohol. Dip lightly, clean contacts.

Step two - (if you can find it) liquid copper conducting "paint" (called Stipple where I'm from) and re-paint (very carefully!) the contact parts that are missing.

Step three - give it a try.

Step four - IF it works (and that's a mighty big IF) be prepared to pull data off in *one* pass to a USB stick or something. Just grab everything but the Windows directory (and perhaps the program dirs), don't try to be picky, you're running against the clock here.

 

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, CastleCrusher said:

I did a quick search for the drives model no. and it doesn't look too bad for a replacement board.

Again, IF you can find an *exact* match for firmware and controller chip numbers. This part is *critical*

[CastleCrusher]

4 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Yup, assuming that's the actual issue and not something else.

Step one - get some q-tips and rubbing alcohol. Dip lightly, clean contacts.

Step two - (if you can find it) liquid copper conducting "paint" (called Stipple where I'm from) and re-paint (very carefully!) the contact parts that are missing.

Step three - give it a try.

Step four - IF it works (and that's a mighty big IF) be prepared to pull data off in *one* pass to a USB stick or something. Just grab everything but the Windows directory (and perhaps the program dirs), don't try to be picky, you're running against the clock here.

 

I'm quite positive this is the issue, I'll look into this if I can't find an exact replacement board.

[CastleCrusher]

4 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Again, IF you can find an *exact* match for firmware and controller chip numbers. This part is *critical*

Yeah, hopefully such a thing exists for the drive I have. Thanks.