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jedinite8 · Active contributor Joined: 05 Oct 2008 Posts: 6

Hi all,

I am looking for a replacement PCB for the following:

Western Digital Caviar SE 160 GB SATA
Model: WD1600JS-75MHB0
Mfg Date: 20 July 2005
DCM: DSBACTJAH
PCB P/N: 2060-701335-003 REV B

If anyone can help, that would be very much appreciated. Thank you!

harddrivespecialist · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 6:16 pm Post subject:

Hi!

I do have a board for this drive.

You will have to modify a board by switching ROM chip from original board to a new one.
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jedinite8 · Active contributor Joined: 05 Oct 2008 Posts: 6

Hi,

Thanks so much for your reply! Unfortunately I fear the ROM may be the problem. Perhaps you can help me identify the source of the problem.

The symptoms are as follows:

1) BIOS detects the drive as WDC ROM MODEL-HAWK, 8 GB capacity.
2) When powering up the PC, the hard drive clicks three (3) times and then spins down.
3) MHDD reports that the drive is ready/seek complete but recalibration (RECAL) fails. Subsequent attempts to initialize (INIT) the drive also result in RECAL failing. I am not able to query the SMART attributes using MHDD either.

If I replace the existing PCB with a new one and move the old U12 ROM to the new PCB, do I have any chance for success given the symptoms?

harddrivespecialist · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 7:13 pm Post subject:

In this case, switching a ROM to a new board will not solve the problem.
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jedinite8 · Active contributor Joined: 05 Oct 2008 Posts: 6

In my limited experience, if the drive model/PCB is sufficiently similar, the ROM doesn't need to be swapped.

In two previous cases (WD 40 GB, and WD 80 GB) I have successfully been able to get the drives working with a complete PCB swap without swapping over the ROM. The geometry was also the same for the failed drive and PCB donor drive. The manufacture dates were only about 1-2 months apart.

Do you have a PCB that's close to my drive model/mfg date? My drive's geometry is LBA 312500000. I know there's no guarantee of success but I would like to try if I can get a PCB that's similar enough. This is actually for a close friend who neglected to do any backups so they've lost a fair bit of important and otherwise unrecoverable data.

Thank you.

harddrivespecialist · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 2:07 am Post subject:

This model could have 6 heads with 2 of them disabled and without right equipment you can't determine exact head map.

I can sell you a board with most common configuration, but if it won't work you might think I sold you a bad board.
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cheadledatarecovery1 · Deadharddrive regular +1 Joined: 22 Feb 2008 Posts: 33

Hi there,

Your disk has a firmware failure. This is why your hard disk is being detected as WDC ROM MODEL-HAWK.

This cannot be fixed just by altering the logic board. THere will be corrupt modules of firmware in the Service Area (SA) which can only be fixed by using specialist equipment (e.g. PC3K).

If you need any help with this then please ask,
best wishes,
John

http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk

jedinite8 · Active contributor Joined: 05 Oct 2008 Posts: 6

Hi folks,

Thanks for your follow up.

I think I have managed to source a candidate drive for PCB swap (I'm waiting for it to arrive). For everyone's benefit I would also like to report details on a very recent situation (last month) in which a complete PCB swap (without swapping the U12 ROM/firmware or any other components) was successful; BIOS detection + full read capability so that the defective drive could be cloned using a donor PCB to a brand new hard drive using GHOST (with no read errors, full data recovery). This is one of the cases I referred to in a previous post.

I may have been very lucky and this may be an anecdotal case but I have direct evidence that a total PCB swap can be successful. Here are the details on the defective and donor drives.

Defective drive:
MDL: WD800BB-75CAA0
DATE: 14 APR 2002
DCM: DSEHNA2AH
PCB: 2060-001092-007 REV A
Connector label: 0000 001092-200 G X W 1480 SZE3 A 00 05 41 0 2415

Donor drive:
MDL: WD800BB-00CAA0
DATE: 02 FEB 2002
DCM: DSEHNQ2AA
PCB: 2060-001092-007 REV A
Connector label: 0000 001092-100J X W 1475 G2ER C 00 04 31 0 2314

Note that the manufacture dates are very close, the PCB part numbers are the same, and that the DCM does not have to be identical (I have previously read elsewhere that the last 5 characters in the DCM *must* match but clearly this is not always true). This may give some people hope for finding a suitable match if they have defective WD drives.

Cheers...

harddrivespecialist · Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 3:07 pm Post subject:

PCB swaps could be very successfull, specially when you know how to match it.

DCM has almost nothing to do with PCB's.

Your 160GB WD drive has firmware or SA issue.
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jedinite8 · Active contributor Joined: 05 Oct 2008 Posts: 6

Well, unfortunately, the donor PCB didn't work. This is the candidate donor disk I used:

Western Digital Caviar SE 160 GB SATA
Model: WD1600JS-98MHB0
Mfg Date: 17 AUG 2005
DCM: DSCHCTJCH
PCB P/N: 2060-701335-003 REV B

When powering on the computer with the swapped PCB, I get the exact same symptoms:

1) BIOS detects the drive as WDC ROM MODEL-HAWK, 8 GB capacity.
2) When powering up the PC, the hard drive clicks three (3) times and then spins down.
3) MHDD reports that the drive is ready/seek complete but recalibration (RECAL) fails. Subsequent attempts to initialize (INIT) the drive also result in RECAL failing. I am not able to query the SMART attributes using MHDD either.

It looks like a previous poster is correct about there being a service area problem on the drive. I found this thread on HDD Guru: http://forum.hddguru.com/confused-about-firmware-service-area-t9687.html

Does anyone have experience with A-FF Repair Station and can share any successes/failures?

jedinite8 · Active contributor Joined: 05 Oct 2008 Posts: 6

A-FF Repair Station is now irrelevant. It has a free diagnostic mode but it determined that it could not repair the problem (that's nice of it to say before making people shell out the money). I believe the software would have attempted to re-write the firmware/SA based on the web site's description.

So maybe that area of the disk is damaged beyond repair; or the drive heads are bad; are there any other possibilities? I am just wondering what options I have at this point (that costs less than a professional data recovery firm like DriveSavers or Ontrack).