Harddrive not working

[Caleb SF]

My friend's hard drive's sata connector broke. I replaced the PCB of the harddrive with a new pcb from an exact same hard drive (WD Blue 1TB wd10ezez). The hard drive turns on but it doesn't boot (it has win10). I plugged it into my computer and it comes up as an unknown device. I cannot initialize it, I have uninstalled and reinstalled drivers, it shows it device not migrated. I tried to do a chkdsk but there is no letter associated with it. I wanted to initialize it and just recover the files, but it says "The request cannot be performed because of an I/O device error". I am at a complete loss and have been working on it for 2 days....

 

TLDR: Hard drive is coming up as unknown device, cannot be initialized.

 

 

Thanks for your help!

[mariushm]

I think there's some memory chip  on the old circuit board which contains parameters for the drive, calibration data etc etc

 

Look for 8 pin chips, search for datasheets for various chips and see which one is eprom/nvram/flash/whatever

 

See for example : https://www.donordrives.com/pcb-replacement-guide

or https://tierradatarecovery.co.uk/swapping-pcbs

[Wolly9102]

Replacing the HDD PCB is not just as simple as that.

 

 

I have some links for you that may help you

 

 

https://superuser.com/questions/1317272/can-i-change-hdd-pcb-to-try-fixing-a-dead-hdd

 

https://superuser.com/questions/345139/likelihood-of-a-hard-drive-pcb-replacement-working

 

https://www.donordrives.com/pcb-replacement-guide

[Caleb SF]

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

I think there's some memory chip  on the old circuit board which contains parameters for the drive, calibration data etc etc

 

Look for 8 pin chips, search for datasheets for various chips and see which one is eprom/nvram/flash/whatever

Like this?

winbond 250288WV1G 1738

[mariushm]

Yeah, most likely that's the chip. Must be moved onto the new board.

[Caleb SF]

12 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Yeah, most likely that's the chip. Must be moved onto the new board.

So unless I physically move the chip, i cannot recover anything from it? Even when it shows the device is working properly?

[mariushm]

The processor/controller on the board of the hard drive can successfully communicate with the PC through the sata cable and respond to the commands the sata controller sends. That's what Windows means by "is working properly".

However, the processor doesn't know where the data tracks are physically located on the discs and all the parameters it needs to correctly read the bits from the discs. No  platters (discs) are the same, so at the factory they do some calculations and measure some things and store that stuff inside that memory chip.

The data on your new board is specific to the platters on that drive and won't match the platters on your drive.

 

[Caleb SF]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

snip

 

I don't think I'll be able to replace it. Especially since it risks breaking 2 pcb's...