3.5 Hard Drive Pcb Replacement

[fatgaz]

hi I have a Hitachi 3.5 hard drive which while moving house had the sata connection broke, my question is ...can I buy a replacement pcb for it and just swap them over or is the pcb some how paired with the hard drive I have read various conflicting things as to what to do eg some say you have to swap the bios chip some say just replace the pcb it will be fine, would like to get a definitive answer if poss my hd is a ...hds721010cla332 ....ty for any reply's
gaz

[Old_Geezer]

What did Hitachi suggest ?

[CrapAtCryptics]

there are used disks available on Ebay starting at £25 - much less fuss than trying a repair

[fatgaz]

will contact hitachi tomoz but was just wondering if anyone else had the same prob and what did they do, also yes i know i can pick up another hd but i need to get the info off this one, yes was going to buy either a second hand hd or pcb which ever was the cheapest

[Togo]

When you say that the "connection" got broken I take it that you mean the plug in part of the pcb. Do you have the tech skill to do a lash up with fine wire and solder? It may involve carefully stripping the lacquer from the board and exposing printed circuit before making contact that way. May be worth the effort if only one or two of the contacts are busted. You can bypass the plug in bit by exposing the bare wires and attaching croc clips or the such like making sure to cause no shorts. Once you data is recovered you can replace or have a replacement in situ to transfer the data. It looks as if the only units that the pcb can be swapped easily on are the Seagate drives but not the Barracuda range.

http://www.datarecoveryspecialists.co.uk/case-studies/changing-pcbs

[fatgaz]

hi togo, good idea, i think i would prob give that a go if i didnt have any important data on it but i dont know if i accidentally shorted it out weather it would affect any pcb inside the hd or make matters worse and only leave me the expensive data retrieval from a specialist company ty for your help/suggestion

[Togo]

I was an electronics engineer for 20 odd years Gaz and would do something like that if I had to. I can however recognise what not to expose to heat on a pcb. You probably wouldn't even have to expose the print just trace the print to a common "solder" contact that is not in contact with something fragile. If it is only one or two broken contacts not a big job...….but. Good luck anyway.