We see this one a lot on hard drive recovery forums and sometimes someone will call us at Tierra Data Recovery and ask if we can sell them a PCB for their failed hard drive.

The answer has to be no for two reason, one very simple and the other less so:

1. It is impossible for anyone who is not an expert to determine whether the problem is isolated to the PCB or not.

2. Lets for the sake of argument assume that the fault is indeed solely on the PCB. 95 times out of 100 a straight PCB swap will not work. By PCB swap I am assuming that you manage to acquire a perfect match PCB, it still almost certainly won’t work, here’s why:

Every drive has a store of start-up and configuration code stored, it is called firmware and is stored partly on the PCB and partly on the platters inside the drive. This firmware is varied at will by the manufacturing factory but the portions stored on the PCB and the platters must match. Even worse some of this firmware (the so called “adaptive firmware”) is unique to that individual drive and built-up over its operational lifetime. This adaptive firmware must be accessed when the drive boots up, if it is not then there will be no access to the drive’s user data storage area. Consequently it is essential that the portion of the firmware stored on the PCB matches that on the platters and belongs to that individual drive. Drive firmware is not accessible without specialist tools and it requires highly esoteric knowledge to be able to manipulate it. The portion of the firmware stored on the PCB is held either in an EPROM chip or alternatively in a storage area within the main processor chip.

In either case a damaged PCB unfortunately means that you will need the assistance of data recovery experts.