Hi,
This is my report of an attempted disk controller replacement. It may be useful to other readers.
I have a defective 640 GB drive Samsung HD642JJ rev A, 16M with controller board Trinity R006M rev05, BF41-00184B. It just went dead at power-up. No noise, no smoke, nothing.
Posted a question on this forum a while ago about replacement of the controller board. The board was clearly dead, ice cold and drawing no power. The surge protection diodes were ok. The DC/DC converters gave no output voltage. This pointed to a failed component on the PCB, most likely the spindle motor control chip.
Decided to give board replacement a try. Here goes the story:
- Found a replacement PCB at DonorDrives.com, ordered it and received a model BF41-00184A instead of the BF41-00184B that was on my drive. Assumed this was of no importance.
- Mounted the board on the HD, powered up to BIOS... drive recognized, but as a 500 GB model instead of my 640. Windows said 'please format'. Clearly this board was not ok.
- Contacted DonorDrives; they said a ROM chip transplantation was necessary. The leaflet included with the replacement board said that chip transfer was not necessary for this drive type; this was also the opinion of fzabkar on this forum, in answer to my question.
- Replacing surface mount parts requires special tools that I don't have. So I was now forced to send the PCB back to DonorDrives for (free) adaptation. More international shipment costs...
- Shipped the PCB along with the defective board and, on their request, the hard drive, so they "could test it and determine if there was damage to the drive itself". Sounds reasonable, so I did it.
- Got message from DonorDrives: the chip transfer was successful, but (citation) "Unfortunately we determined that is [the drive] also had suffered from a head failure". Attached to the e-mail was a price offer for Data Recovery, price $950.
- Asked for a bit more precise info than "suffered a head failure". The answer: "We use professional tools and software".
Current status: I have no drive, no controller PCB, no data and many questions.
Such as: Would a correct board have required any adaptation at all? Can the failure of the spindle motor control chip cause damage to the heads? What does this 'head failure' mean? Looks like a one fits all explanation. Can two unrelated components fail at exactly the same instant? Any positive/negative experiences with DonorDrives?
Any answers/comments welcome!
This is my report of an attempted disk controller replacement. It may be useful to other readers.
I have a defective 640 GB drive Samsung HD642JJ rev A, 16M with controller board Trinity R006M rev05, BF41-00184B. It just went dead at power-up. No noise, no smoke, nothing.
Posted a question on this forum a while ago about replacement of the controller board. The board was clearly dead, ice cold and drawing no power. The surge protection diodes were ok. The DC/DC converters gave no output voltage. This pointed to a failed component on the PCB, most likely the spindle motor control chip.
Decided to give board replacement a try. Here goes the story:
- Found a replacement PCB at DonorDrives.com, ordered it and received a model BF41-00184A instead of the BF41-00184B that was on my drive. Assumed this was of no importance.
- Mounted the board on the HD, powered up to BIOS... drive recognized, but as a 500 GB model instead of my 640. Windows said 'please format'. Clearly this board was not ok.
- Contacted DonorDrives; they said a ROM chip transplantation was necessary. The leaflet included with the replacement board said that chip transfer was not necessary for this drive type; this was also the opinion of fzabkar on this forum, in answer to my question.
- Replacing surface mount parts requires special tools that I don't have. So I was now forced to send the PCB back to DonorDrives for (free) adaptation. More international shipment costs...
- Shipped the PCB along with the defective board and, on their request, the hard drive, so they "could test it and determine if there was damage to the drive itself". Sounds reasonable, so I did it.
- Got message from DonorDrives: the chip transfer was successful, but (citation) "Unfortunately we determined that is [the drive] also had suffered from a head failure". Attached to the e-mail was a price offer for Data Recovery, price $950.
- Asked for a bit more precise info than "suffered a head failure". The answer: "We use professional tools and software".
Current status: I have no drive, no controller PCB, no data and many questions.
Such as: Would a correct board have required any adaptation at all? Can the failure of the spindle motor control chip cause damage to the heads? What does this 'head failure' mean? Looks like a one fits all explanation. Can two unrelated components fail at exactly the same instant? Any positive/negative experiences with DonorDrives?
Any answers/comments welcome!