Guide to Swap Hard Drive PCB

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What is Hard Drive PCB?
The green board on the bottom of the hard drive is known as Printed Circuit Board(PCB). The main function of the PCB is to supply power to the hard drive, maintain speed and rotation of the spindle, and control all internal operations through its firmware. Essentially, PCB is the brains of the hard drive that all components are heavily dependent upon.

Why Swap Hard Drive PCB?
Hard drives that do not spin up after the power has been supplied can be diagnosed as PCB failure. Because data recovery service is very expensive, sometimes we would prefer to swap PCB ourselves.

How to find the matching Hard Drive PCB boards?
• Western Digital - same board number which is etched on the PCB, begin with 2060-
• Seagate - same board number which is etched on the PCB, begin with 100…, and the same Main Controller IC. If you can’t find the number on the PCB (Old Models), you should find the same Main Controller IC.
• Maxtor– same Main Controller IC(The biggest chip on the board)
• Hitachi– same information on the small white label (first two lines)
• Samsung - same board number which is etched on the PCB, begin with BF41-
• Fujitsu - same board number which is etched on the PCB, begin with CA***

Hard Drive PCB Swap Process:
Remove the PCB from both hard drives with star screwdriver. Replace the damaged PCB with replacement one. If you HDD spins up, but can’t be recognized, you should also exchange the BIOS chip on it. If there is no matching 8pins BIOS chip on the PCB, it means the BIOS chip is integrated on the Main Chip IC, then you should remove the damaged PCB’s Main Chip IC to the donor PCB. It is more complex to exchange the Main Chip IC than exchange the BIOS chip. If you should do, please do several test on the PCBs which don’t have the important data.

What is PCB’s BIOS Chip?
All of the 8pins (4 pins on each sides) with 25P05VP, 25P10VP, 25F512, 25F1024, 25F1024AN, SST25VF512, SST25VF010, etc. are the BIOS chip. It is easy to be found because there are not many 8pins chips on the PCB.
In most cases, you should exchange the BIOS before you swap hard drive pcb. You should have certain technique.

Where to buy hard drive pcb online?
There are many great PCB online stores sell all kinds of PCB for your data recovery needs!. They provide all kinds of PCB: Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, Samsung, IBM, Hitachi and Fujitsu. They can always help you to find the marching PCB for your hard drive.

Note: You should know the hard drive failures are not always caused by PCB failure, swap PCB can’t guarantee to fix all of the hard drive problems.

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PCB (printed circuit board) :
Circuits, also called printed circuit boards, are clad with metal, glass fiber impregnated polyimide and polyester films, on which the conductors by etching the metal coating can be etched out. Standard boards have the support elements for the components, socket, sockets, connectors , etc. which are attached to this. For classification are the base materials of printed circuit boards in classes FR (FR, Flame Retardant) each. Frequently used circuit boards are flame retardant FR4 PCB with a thickness of 0.8 mm. I guess the information is helpful.