CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Zebu Fellenz · Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 2567

I had my seagate barracuda 7200.8 250GB. HDD bite the dust last night; One of the pins on the controller board became bent and then fell out, my question is can the controller boards from other seagate drives be used on mine to fix it. If possible I'd like to get a 40GB. seagate drive and swap off the controller board. Looking at cost this looks like a better idea $30 vs. $100

Thanks

Erik Very Happy

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 4:55 pm Post subject:

I've done this but only with same/same hard drives. Never tried it with different models

Jaric00n · Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 140 Location: Nyack,NY

Zebu

it will not work

the bios on the controller will not be able to recognize # of platters/heads

Tried this with so WD drive with important data...

bought another exact same drive ..swapped it...and voila...saved all the data ...

**Joust** · Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 1:59 am Post subject: Re: Seagate HDD repair

jordan · Guest

the bios on the controller will not be able to recognize # of platters/heads

Elaine Benes · Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Posts: 1416

I've seen just controller boards for sale on ebay for quite a bit less than the full drive.

MikeEby · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 5238 Location: Osceola, Indiana

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12026 Location: Fort Collins, CO

My wife has a Maxtor 3200 drive that just bit the big one. And natch, she never backed it up. The USB connection still works, but the systems never recognize it as a drive. I'm guessing the controller bit it. Hadn't thought about swapping in another controller. Maybe I'll open it up and see if I can swap it out myself.

And we're getting two 1TB network drives to start backing things up religiously. Smile

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12026 Location: Fort Collins, CO

Hey, that was a LOT easier than I expected. Once I finally pried the @#$# case open (it will never close again, but I don't care), I just removed the USB interface board, plugged the drive into a PC, and shazam! There's all our data. Apparently it was just the USB board that went bad. That's about the LAST thing I would have expected, especially since Windows recognized it as a Maxtor 3200 when you plugged it in!

The data is all being copied over to another drive now. *phew* Smile

Phil Smith · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 7717

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330223852306

jmcmahon7 · Joined: 03 May 2008 Posts: 18

Looks like you are sorted, but ill add this to the thread anyway.

Changing logic boards can be a crapshoot and you can actually loose data. The prospective board must the be same board rev and same frmware rev. If you can nail that then you are in good shape (things can still go wrong!), otherwise its tricky and pretty risky. If you dont value your data that much, ie its not of significant financial or sentimental value, then "guessing" the logic board is one way to go.

If you break a pin on the HD connector you can always stick a longer pin in the IDE connector that protures just long enough to touch the metal in the drive. Needless to say, this is a tempaorary workaround, just to get your data off there.

HTH