Re: Troubleshooing advice, please...

On 3/24/2024 2:00 PM, Nil wrote:
> 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.
> 

I just wanted to get the message across, whereas in the past
you could just do a board swap and "try your hand at it",
on modern drives this is not going to work, unless you
move the ROM from the old board to the new. There are
actually several ROM devices, but one of them appears
to be a "custom", programmed at the factory just for that
particular serial number of drive. Once information is written,
with respect to that ROM, the ROM stays with the HDA. That's my
guess as to what is going on. Old drives did not need
this care and attention.

You may be able to find an article somewhere, demonstrating
the swapping of the thing.

   Paul