check out the comparison shots of my maxtor drives
sorry for my bad photo skills
it's maybe hard to tell, but about 4 pins have also been blown off the chip, 2 on the right of the top side and 2 on the lower half of the right side
so jamie, i did send a request off to Maxtor to see if they think the PCBs should be compatible
if i get back anything besides "swapping PCBs isn't supported and would void your warranty" i will be VERY surprised
but we shall see
Agreed! Sometimes you can strike lucky though…usually when the support people are on holiday and someone else has to answer the mail 🙂
(I'm speaking generally, of course, not about Maxtor specifically).
Let us know how you get on.
Jamie
Hi,
Prob to late now but just thought id share my little knowledge. I used to work for a data recovery company and replacing the PCB is harder than it sounds. Depending on the make of the drive you will need to find a near exact match of your existing drive which is not easy! and you cant buy PCBs on their own from what i have seen. You would need to match all kinds of model numbers, serial numbers from your original hdd to your replacement. If your really unlucky you could need date and location it was made. My advice would be to send it to a recovery company. Prices are not cheap though. Speak to the hdd manufacturer depending on how long you have had the hdd as they may be able to offer you some money towards it or get you a discount. You will be looking in the region of £500-£800 i would of thought. So depends on how badly you want your data back.
I can highly recommend
Thanks for that Jay, and welcome to Forensic Focus.
Kind regards,
Jamie
No problem, came accross this website while searching for info on other forensic companies. Looks like a good website.
one last call, going to bid on a hd in less than 4 hours
put a pic of the candidate pcb up on the site (see earlier in the thread)
it was mfg just 2 days after my drive
let me know if you think it is worth my time/money to try for this drive
Looking at the pics you have put up i would say you have a good chance of the PCB swap working. The main number to match are the Code: YAR41VW0 and the long number at the bottom, 6Y1020L0 etc or what ever it read. Matching those two numbers usually works if not there is only one other way doing it which is quite complicated. So if it doesnt work your unlucky. Im pretty sure the numbers from the bad and good hdd matched looking at your pics so you should be ok, just double check the numbers.
> Matching those two numbers usually works if not there is only one other way doing it which is quite complicated. So if it doesnt work your unlucky
ouch
you see there are actually 3 different drives in those pictures
1. bad: drive that got fried
2. good: first drive i bought to find a match, it had all the same numbers (as you said in your post), but it still didn't work. But there was some variation in the pcbs and was manufactured 21 days later, so i thought of trying to find an even better match
3. candidate: there is only one pic of this drive, that the seller sent to me. The pcb looks much closer to the bad drive and it was only mfg 2 days later
but if you're right and the 'good' drive should have worked, then i just wasted a bunch of money (shipping from the UK is expensive) buying the candidate drive
Sorry that it did not work. In the many board swaps that i have done, matching some of the numbers usually works but matching all of them and the drive still not working is just plain unlucky (and expensive to you). You may be lucky with this drive you have ordered, sometimes the location the unit was made and date are needed. If thats the case your pretty unlucky as that doesnt happen to often. There is only one other thing i can suggest but im not 100% of how to perform the task. Id prefer to email you that last step should you need it. But as i say im not 100% sure of how it works. Only seen it done a few times and using a cleanroom.
Tonksy21@hotmail.com