Can I remedy HD failure with a new controller board?

kinix

Honorable
Sep 11, 2013
10
0
10,510
Recently, I had a Seagate drive die on me. It was working perfectly one night (same speeds as always, no errors of any sort in the file architecture, etc). The next morning, I come down to find my computer crashed, and on further evaluation, my hard drive supposedly dead.

Upon a further diagnosis, my drive (Seagate ST3500410AS, 500GB/7200RPM) just wasn't spinning up. There was no sound, no heat, nothing. The drive simply sat there and did nothing, wasn't recognized by the BIOS or my USB drive with a Windows installation on it.

After hearing of the concept of replacing the hard drive's controller board, I sounded like a prime candidate. This rather outdated, but mildly informative website seemed to suggest that I (case #1) had the kind of problem that could be attributed to a controller board failure. Logically, the parts which would've failed in such a manner are few- it sounds like the only places that failure would be is either in the controller board or in the drive motor. Is replacing the drive controller board a path I can/should consider for such a problem as this?

Furthermore, if you do think that this is the correct path to look into, I believe I have located the correct replacement board for this model. It's the same dimensions, and the contacts are in the same place. Although it may not function exactly the same in terms of SMART response/error checking, will this board fit the bill to get my data off of this drive/restore the drive to a working state?

Many thanks to any and all information that you can provide to help me in this situation. Also, if I have misposted this or am violating some form of rule on THW, please let me know- it's my first post, although I've seen many a helpful post come from the site.
 
Solution
yes, you can. but it is slightly risky. if the data is extremely important to you, let the experts do it. if it isnt as important, go ahead.

kinix

Honorable
Sep 11, 2013
10
0
10,510
I suppose there is a risk, although I'm not exactly sure what that entails- but one way or another, my drive can't be more dead than it already is. Furthermore, I found the exact duplicate of the board, from the hard drive size, to the board model number, to the revision, to the firmware. Everything is the same. Hopefully, that will do the trick.