Replacing controller PCB on Fujitsu drive?

[pianopeddler]

Yick. My Fujitsu MPG3204AH has a bad controller PCB board. (It spins up OK and does an initial head movement, but the drive won't show up on the IDE controller device list at boot-up, and I've tried two different cables and two different IDE controllers.) Is it possible to switch the PCB with one from another MPG3204AH with easily available tools? Data Recovery Labs wants $500. to do this but from looking at the screws on the PCB it appears to be removeable. I NEED to get the data off the drive--that's why I want to try replacing the PCB.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Eugene Beer

 

[pianopeddler]

Well, after calling several USA data recovery shops and not being able to actually talk with a technician, finally, at ADR (a-data.com in Canada), an experienced technician talked with me for 10 minutes about what is likely to have happened to my drive. Usually when the controller PCB goes bad, the disk won't spin up at all. On the other hand, when the heads crash they can't read the calibration and drive identification sectors (this ID appears on the IDE controller posting at boot-up).

So, he tells me it's most likely my heads have crashed and I'll have to pay the big bucks ($400) for them to fix the heads to recover the data. He said that usually when Fujitsu heads crash, they don't damage the platter too badly so the prognosis for data recovery is good (but expensive :-( If I decide to get the data recovered I'll definitely go with ADR

 

[kief]

Wow, thats not expensive....its pretty damn cheap for data recovery. Are they promising anything at all?

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!

 

[pianopeddler]

They evaluate the drive first, for free, and tell you what the price will be. Actually, $400 is the minimum price they charge, although he said with Fujitsu they've had good success at fixing heads accurately so that they don't have to baby sit the recovery sector-by-sector.

 

[kief]

hehe....nice =)

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!

 

[Crashman]

NO d00d, he lied, I've replace MANY drive PCB's. Here's what happens to me:
1. I buy a truckload of used computers
2. around 15% have bad drives
3. About half of those make BAD NOISES, the other half won't read
4. I take the PCB's off the noisy ones and put them on the quite ones
5. I now have half of them fixed.

Drives spin up on their own! When the PCB is bad, it's usually just the data connection, not the power connection.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?