www.deadharddrive.com

[mathewfer]

Hi,

My HD stopped working after a power failure. There is no mechanical movements etc. Also there were other PCs that went through the same power failure & their HD are working alright. At the moment, this WDC HD did not spin at all, no noise & no vibrations when powered on. So I am sure that the PCB was faulty. Also there is no visible damages on the 2 sides of the PCB.

I started to look for the PCB (circuit board of the HDD) with the PCB
version number – 2060-001265-001 REV A. This number is visible on the PCB when you carefully look at the middle of the edge.

By Googling, I found that if I find the exact PCB to swap, there is a chance of recovering some important data. Although I had backups, there were still few weeks of data that I wanted to recover from that. Also as I bought this HD in Australia, I was sure someone may have it here.

After posting in one of Australian forums asking for a similar HD, thanks to one guy who extended a helping hand to offer with his HD with the same PCB & HD model now.

That helped me to recover all my data without losing any data at all.

Details:

My disk:
Model no: WD1600JB-00GVA0
PCB no: 2060-001265-001 REV A
DCM no : DSBHNTJAA
Manufactured date : 23 Apr 2005 in Thailand

Doner's disk:
Model no: WD1600JB-00GVA0
PCB no: 2060-001265-001 REV A
DCM no : DSBHCVJAH
Manufactured date : 23 Nov 2004 in Thailand

These 2 HDs are almost identical except the DCM & manufacturing dates.

1st step:

I swapped the PCM & my HD started to spin, identify correctly (as WD1600JB-00GVA0) in BIOS but it did not boot or did not show any data when accessed as secondary drive.

2nd step:

Swapped U12 ROM chip from my disk to working doner's PCB. It quickly worked - I could boot the PC with that & all the data was seen. I copied all the data to my new NAS & at the end, all the data was in order - no loss at all.

After googling, I concluded that even if you have 2 HDs coming from the same assembly line, same date & time, this U12 ROM is supposed to contain unique data to each drive. Therefore, it is highly likely that you will be successful if you swap U12 ROM. I also found PCB with the below part numbers are almost same in terms of functionalities (except cache size etc) & it could be made identical with U12 ROM swap.

2060-001266-001 REV A or 2060-701265-001 REV A or 2060-701266-001 REV A

Check this link - http://www.hdd-parts.com/10001266.html

I did the de-soldering & soldering of this chip. De-soldering is bit difficult but with lot of patience, I could do that. I used a standard 30W soldering iron with a pencil tip end to do the soldering the chip back on to board. In total, I took about 1hrs to do this swap.

Also I learnt lot by going through this forum so I am posting my success story here for others benefit.

I hope the above details are very helpful for someone who is looking for information.

Mathew

[Mikeluz]

According to several threads of several foruns that I read, it appears that in your particular case, if you have matched also the DCM then you wouldn't need to swap the ROM (U12) chip.

Cheers

[DrewCabler]

[harddrivespecialist]

[sunnydreamspace]

[corbingravely]

Actually comparing this with other HDD is not going to work. I mean, this happens randomly. You are just unlucky I guess. There is nothing you can do, but, change the HDD. Make sure you get the one suitable to your motherboard.






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