Hard drive failure & logic board replacement

[ChuckB]

My computer screen froze yesterday and upon rebooting I got a message on the first screen with words to the effect of "SMART has detected as imminent hard drive failure, back up all data now." After it finished rebooting I started transfering files to another drive and it locked up again after about 5 minutes.

After trying to reboot, the drive was now gone (it was my boot drive) and could not be detected in the bios or by FDISK. After checking all cables I took it over to a friend's place and same thing - his computer will not recognize the drive.

The drive is out of warranty and the info on it is not too important but I would still like to try to recover it myself. The drive will still spin and I have an identical drive in the computer so I would like to swap the hard drive's logic boards and see if I can get it going long enough to finish transfering data.

The circuit board is attached to the hard drive by 4 screws but the problem lies in the connector attachment from the circuit board to the center of the drive. After examining it under a magnifying glass I still can't seem to figure out how to undo this connector. I thought I had it after I pulled back on 2 tabs on the side but it still is firmly attached. I am not even sure if it is to be pulled straight back or up.

If anyone has any experience with this or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

ChuckB

P3 450 128 MB
2 10 GB IBM Deskstars DTTA-371010 (14GXP)
Maxtor 60 GB
Marvel 200
SB Live
Pyro firewire

[ChuckB]

Well, I finally got the circuit board off the failed hard drive and replaced it with the one from the identical good drive, but still no luck. The drive spins but it is not recognized in either the bios or fdisk so I'm open to suggestions but it looks like I have an expensive hockey puck on my hands.

ChuckB

[uberlad]

I tried the same thing when my housemates Fujitsu 30Gb died. Worked just as much as well

Now I have two - I think I'll make speakers out of them

HD Speakers

Uberlad

[SteveC]

It can work, assuming the logic board is the point of failure. I've done it a couple of times in the past when a chip has blown on the logic board. I think they were all Maxtors though!

[Gear]

My uncle had a 10GB Quantum Fireball lct, and after some strange noises, when he rebooted, the drive was not recognized anymore. I had a identical drive that had almost the same problem, and some guy repaired my uncle's drive with components from mine. It worked well and he was able to recover the data. It seems the drives had different parts broken.

[ChuckB]

Thanks for your comments guys. Unfortunately after swapping the boards didn't work (and being the cheap ... I mean frugal person I am) and as I said the data wasn't too important, I'm hesistant about paying big $$ to get it repaired or have the data recovered so I think I'll hold off on that option for now.

ChuckB