Seagate Archive HDD Failure. No Crash, No Spin, Silent. Help?

I will be geting my rework station tomorrow. May I ask what heat setting is best for removing this PCB Board Firmware Rom Chip? It has a digital setting with three numbers on it so I would assume I could set it to the exact setting. I need both settings one for the soldering device and one for the heat gun part. It has two settings.

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Sad Update. I replaced my bios chip on two new donor boards with no luck on both of them. However, I don't think I was placing it right because I could never get a solid connection. It would always pop right off. Hopefully, I didn't destroy the chip because I know it will be party over if I did.


I have sent the pcb board and bios chip to a repair facility for them to install the bios chip for me and send it back. Hopefully they still can but they might not be able to. The pins are still in great shape however, you can't read the numbering anymore therefore don't know which side to face the chip. yikes.


I already contacted gilware and they said don't bother sending us the drive if the bios chip is fried. crazy huh. Aren't these companies suppose to be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat? I know its expensive and all.


My question is i know i did everything wrong and its all my fault. Are there any options left? Can someone read the rom off the platters and reprogram a new bios chip and install it for me? Can someone do a platter swap in a clean room?


Please Advise without kocking my head off preferably. Be somewhat gentle.

Steve C said:

I love your perseverance but your chances of success are minimal

Thank you for that. I am hearing I could send it to ontrack, and they could possibly do a platter swap or read the data from the platters on an entirely new drive and bios and get my data back but it will be at a small cost of a small mortgage. Lol.

Steve C said:

Why not? Consulting on a technical problem from multiple sources is a good engineering approach. I did it all the time.

Thanks for the positive feedback, need more people like you in this world. Thumbs Up!

Steve C said:

That is daft rule which limits free speech which my father fought to protect in WW2

Another Update:

Okay I got my ROM back. Well, I got my ROM back that is a New ROM. They said that my original ROM was too damaged, but they were successful at transferring the ROM information from my Original ROM to this NEW ROM. They checked twice that it was transferred over successful.

Well of course it did not work. The drive is seen in windows but barely. It is doing the same thing before like the original problem. Completely and 100% silent. (I think all windows recognizes is the bridge that it is connected to).

This is the weirdest part. I ordered some more PCB Donor Boards and if I put any of those on this hard drive the drive comes to life. It boots up twice or tries to read the drive twice and gives up.

What dose all this mean? Did some how the original ROM get corrupted and is permanently damaged?

Long Shot

They suggest the file system could be corrupted and that this is almost 100% fixable. Connect PC Max 3000 and either get lucky and extract the data by bypassing the software lock because the drive is in defensive mode or rip the data off raw but will take a while (same as bypassing the locked codes).

Recap:

1-Original PCB Board with Original BIOS in perfect shape (something happened):

-Drive would not boot up, completely silent, not moving or humming at all. OFF.

2-New PCB Donor Board with random bios that is already on the board (Testing):

-Drive boots up and tries to read but gives up and fails.

3-New PCB Donor Board with Original BIOS (I installed it myself, botched it up)

-Drive would not boot up, completely silent, not moving or humming at all. OFF.

4-New PCB Donor Board with New Rom (Installed by professional, bios information transferred over)

-Drive would not boot up, completely silent, not moving or humming at all. OFF.

…

What does all this mean? Something is corrupted with the original bios? How does the drive power up and try to read with a random donor board with whatever BIOS that came with it; but when it is connected with the original bios its dead as a door nail?

I will be getting back my original pcb board and original bios/rom. I’m sure the ROM is in ruff shape but the information has been transferred over to a new ROM. So that is good at least.

What are my options at this point? Is my data lost forever?

NeedsPractice said:

What are my options at this point? Is my data lost forever?

I've been reading your thread and you have been industrious.

I can't tell you if your data is lost forever but at this point have you considered a platter swap to a donor HDD case depending on how important the data is.

It is, apparently, a doable home project, ( I have never done it ) and from what I gather, you don't require a clean room but you do require the work area to be super clean.