Re: Troubleshooing advice, please...

On 24 Mar 2024, Paul <[email protected]> wrote in
alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt: 

> The "concern points" would be, whether a head amplifier
> got damaged, or a motor winding got damaged. The controller
> board could be replaced (but you have to move a ROM from
> the old controller board to the new controller board,
> and you don't know whether the ROM is still good). The
> drives now tend to have FDE support, and it's just a guess
> on my part, that the ROM they tell you to move, has the
> FDE key in it. You can't get the data off, if the key
> information is not correct. Whether every drive has
> a unique key, or whether unencrypted drives all use the
> same key, again, I don't know. Since the HGST website
> that "explained hard drives" is gone, that was my only
> source of information.

I watched a few videos about hard disk recovery. I doubt the 
mechanicals in my drive are damaged, just the electronics, so I was 
wondering if I could just replace the controller board myself - I even 
found a site where you could buy them for various brands. The recovery 
videos I saw showed the guy discovering and replacing various fried 
components using a microscope and surgical tools. I can solder, but not 
like that! I didn't understand the role of the ROMs then, but you clued 
me in. This is almost certainly not a job I can do. Commercial data 
recovery services are VERY VERY expensive. I can recover much of what I 
lost from my spotty backups, and there was a lot of junk I had 
collected. There were a few irreplaceable things. I may just have to 
learn to live without them.