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Fix Hard Drive PCB Board

Articles / 2012-10-14

1. I have a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 hard drive that I am trying to recover the files from. When the drive is connected, it’s beeping with loud noise. Also, I don’t see any activity in the computer when it’s connected. Would the PCB board swap fix my problem? How do I choose the proper board?

My drive is manufactured on: 24July2003
Size: 40GB
Type: ATA
Code: NAR61590
LBA: 80293248
I appreciate any help.
Regards,

2. I believe I need a replacement PCB for one of my 500GB Seagate drives. Powered down last night fine, powered up today and BIOS does not see it. Drive spins up fine, no clicking sounds. Removed it from PC and docked it in an external SATA USB dock, still not recognized. This was one of two “identical” drives that I had bought years ago. After trying to swap PCB boards, found out that the two PCB boards were actually not identical.

Here is the drive and PCB info:

DRIVE INFO
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
ST: 3500320AS
P/N: 9BX154-303
Firmware: SD15
Date code: 08384
Site code: WUXISG
WWN: 5-000C50-00B6DA1FA
STX – ST3500320 AS(B)

PCB MOLD INFO
08051 78054 molex 100438797

PCB INFO
PCB: 100466725
REV A DLAJ-4
GTC 12V-O
0807-74-38
PCB sticker: 100468974 H M837K380
MAIN CONTROLLER IC: LSI TTB5501D
HDD Motor Combo IC: SMOOTH 100369972

I think I found the board on your website. Once I order the $39.00 replacement board, do I need to exchange the BIOS/Main Controller IC before I swap the hard drive PCB? That does not sound like something that one could easily do.

Fix Hard Drive PCB Board please contact HDDZone.com

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How To Boot From SSD Without Removing Old HDD

Articles / 2012-10-14

I have a XPS 17 laptop and I installed a SSD and cloned my HDD to it. I can’t take my old HDD out since the laptop isn’t easy to disassemble. I tried going into the BIOS but it’s not letting me change the boot order for the drives.
Is there a way for me to change the boot order so I can boot from my SSD? If I reformat my HDD, would that solve my problem?

First off, when installing a SSD the recommended method is to remove the HDD so that only the SSD is connected and a clean install is used. Cloning a SSD to a SSD is no problem, but when you clone a HDD to a SSD you need to edit the registry to enable TRIM also most likely the OS on the SSD will not have an aligned OS partition.

If the Bios does not allow boot priority to be selected then as Hawkeye22 stated, you MAY have to swap HDD/SSD position. While you can not see the “Boot prioity” in the Bios it is there (just not sure 2nd Disk drive is listed) and formatting the HDD (AFTER SAVING YOUR DATA) may do the trick (Don’t you just hate the Ulock/limited Bios functions in laptops). PROVIDED both drives are the standard SATA connector. I know some have started to mix mSata with SATA for daul drive laptops.

Also have a 17″laptop with daul HDD bays, But mine are easily accessable as each bay has a screw to release the cover over each bay.

Bottom Line – My recommendation is to 10 Remove HDD, install SSD in that sata port (2) reinstall windows, clean install. (3) when installation is completed reconnect your HDD where you now have the SSD (4) then save all your data from the HDD, reformat and put your data back on the HDD. Envolved, Yes – Hard, quess so, Worth the time and effort, in the long run – YES

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80GB Hard Disk Shows Only 75GB Useable Capacity

Articles / 2012-10-11

My 80GB HDD shows 75GB of spece while partitioning drive & installing XP SP3. Is it any to wrong with HDD or ??? waiting for your updates

That’s normal. Windows reports a drive as smaller than what it says on the sticker.
If you look in BIOS you’ll see the full capacity.

The reason is that HDD manufacturers use 10^3 (1,000) to define 1 kilobyte – Windows use 2^10 (1,024).

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New SSD Installed, Old Storage HDD Not Appearing

Articles / 2012-10-09

I recently upgraded to a Vertex 3 for windows and programs. Runs fine with Windows 7 64-bit except I cannot access my 1TB storage HDD. It DOES appear in the bios and device manager but not in My Computer. I’m wondering if it has anything to do with AHCI mode and TRIM? Any help is much appreciated.

It was a “drive letter” conflict.

Please make sure you bring it “online” in disk management. Go to left-hand side, where it does show up in disk management, as Disk 0 or Disk 1, and make sure it shows “online” as the status. If it shows offline, then right-click that left-most panel and choose “online.”

Sorry if that’s a ‘basic’ answer, but you didn’t give much info.

You did say it shows up in Disk Management – I hope that is correct, vs. “Device Manager.”
Also, please double-check for any existing “drive letter” conflicts from before you moved to the SSD device – i.e., if you forget to re-allocate your old external storage device to a NEW logical drive letter, like G: or H:, for example, then it could be that your new SSD or some other device might try to claim the logical drive letter that was previously being used by the old storage device that you are trying to view.

I have had that happen to me before, and it was puzzling to figure out.

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Changing HDD Letter on Boot Drive

Articles / 2012-10-09

MY HDD is currently labled as H. Long story but it is the only HDD currently in the system. I have run into a problem trying to install Nvidia GPU drivers. I can unload them to H but when they try to install they want to install to C and it does not give me a chance to change the install to H. Is there a way to change my drive letter or a work around for the driver install. OS is currently Vista Business 32 bit.

Have you tried changing the drive letter via diskpart’s assign command?

Command: assign; Syntax: assign[{letter=d|mount=path}] [noerr]

Assigns a drive letter or mount point to the volume with focus. If no drive letter or mount point is specified, then the next available drive letter is assigned. If the assigned drive letter or mount point is already in use, an error is generated.

By using the assign command, you can change the drive letter associated with a removable drive.

You cannot assign drive letters to system volumes, boot volumes, or volumes that contain the paging file. You cannot assign a drive letter to an OEM partition or any GPT partition other than a basic data partition.

letter= d

Specifies the drive letter that you intend to assign to the volume.

mount= path

Specifies the mount point path that you intend to assign to the volume.

noerr

For scripting only. When an error is encountered, specifies that DiskPart continues to process commands as if the error did not occur. Without the noerr parameter, an error causes DiskPart to exit with an error code.

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Sata Data Transfer Rates VS RPM

Articles / 2012-10-08

I am looking to buy a new HDD, my SSD and 200GB HDD is not even close to enough storage for me, so im looking for either 1tb or 2tb, not too sure on the differences in performance, newegg has a deal right now for a 1tb caviar black 7200 rpm for $120, but its only sata 2 interface, however i could pick up a 2tb caviar green drive with sata 3 interface, but there only 5400 rpm for $130 im mainly going to be using the drive for storage, backup and games, since my OS is installed on my SSD. what would be the best bet here based on my needs?

Media servers don’t really stress the disk all that much, except maybe for caching. Any drive, probably even one from ten years ago, could handle the read rate for a media server. There’s an easy way to estimate how much bandwidth you’d need to serve a file.

Let’s say you have a 720p rip on your machine, at 4.5 GB. This movie is 90 minutes long, and you want to serve it from the media server. So, at minimum, your drive needs to be able to read 4.5 GB of data in the time it takes the movie to play. That’s only about 0.85 MB/s.
Because the initial buffering is going to hit the disk harder, you’ll have a higher utilization there, so let’s say we need to load the first minute of data (about 50 MB) as quickly as possible, say in under 5 seconds. That gives us a peak speed requirement of about 10 MB/s.
Even the worst 5400 RPM drive should be able to handle 10 MB/s, and 0.85 MB/s is a pathetically light load.

Which is better a 5400 RPM or a 7200 RPM hard drive and why?

5400 is slower (doesn’t read and write as fast) but uses less power
7200 is faster, but uses more power.
Usually for a laptop 5400 is better.
So for Desktop 7200 is better.

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Samsung Hard Drive PCB Boards Buying Guide

Articles / 2012-10-08

As we know: Samsung HDD can’t spin; board/chip be burnt; interface broken; etc. These problems are caused by PCB malfunction. Swap PCB of your Samsung hard drives can resolve the problems.

1. Samsung Hard Drives PCB Buying Guide:

For Samsung HDD, just need the donor PCB has the same board number as yours.

Samsung HDD PCB Swap

2. Before PCB Swap you should know:

1. Most PCB’s BIOS chip(ROM Chip) store the unique information. We need change the BIOS form original PCB to replacement PCB, in order to make the replacement PCB compatible with the HDD. The 8pins (4 pins on each sides) with 25P05VP、25P10VP、25F512、25F1024、25F1024AN、SST25VF512、SST25VF010, etc. are the BIOS Chip.

Tips: Most of the TV/Phone Repair Shop can offer these services for just $5-%20

Hard Drive PCB Swap: Change BIOS Chip, Main Chip

2. Some PCB don’t have separate BIOS. The BIOS be integrated on the Main Controller IC(The biggest chip on the board, also named Main Chip). We should exchange the Main Controller IC to let the HDD be recognized.

3. Where to buy Samsung PCB Circuit Boards?

SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00263A	SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00206B
SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00163A	SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00204B
SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00068A	SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00109A
SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00051A	SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00303A
SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00085A	SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00205B
SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00314A	SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00284A
SAMSUNG PCB SP0812C BF41-00069A	SAMSUNG PCB HD080HJ BF41-00095A
SAMSUNG PCB SV0411N BF41-00080A	SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00108A
SAMSUNG PCB SP1203N BF41-00112A	SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00133A
SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00086A	SAMSUNG PCB SP0822N BF41-00067A
SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00067B	SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00093A
SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00087A	SAMSUNG PCB BF41-00082A

Note: Samsung PCB sells on HDDZone.com are fully tested before shipment(worldwide free shipping now!); These are just PCB (Printed Circuit Boards), not the whole HDD (Hard Disk Drive).

More other pcb swap guide please refer to this post: hard Drive PCB Swap

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To RAID-0 or Not To RAID-0

Articles / 2012-10-07

I was thinking about going down the RAID road with my rig and was wondering what people think is best RAID-0 or RAID 0+1(This is what i was thinking) or is there a better option advice would be well recived befor i go spend £150 on 3 more new drives to make the 4 needed for 0+1 and could you tell me how RAID 0+1 and RAID 1+0/10 differ please.

As was said up, it’s necessary to know the application before accurate advice can be given. RAID 0 will benefit you in database access, huge spreadsheets, video editing, CAD rendering and a few other specialized apps. For everybody else, all its going to do for you is getting you bragging rights for good benchmark scores.

If you need data redundancy, and in reality who doesn’t, RAID 1 is a viable solution. For most data control situations an NAS presents a very convenient alternative and it easily performs the same job for multiple boxes. All data can be kept on the NAS with images of a standard “programs drive” as well as individual boot drives for each machine on the network, making cold metal restores a cinch. Many proprietary RAID formats will even allow ya to do rebuilds and expansions on the fly via “Hot Swap”. It’s also rather “portable” and the joke in my SOHO is that in case of fire, I can grab the NAS handle and run …. and after the data is safe come back in for the any employees, wife, kids, etc.

If your concern is only “one box”, RAID 1 provides data redundancy…..but so do other alternatives …. i.e. tape / optical, cloud backups …… RAID 0 , again unless you have specialized applications, will serve no observable benefit other than nice benchmark scores.

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Seagate Board 100535537

Articles / 2012-10-07

I am looking for Segate board # 100535537 and the main chip is b5502c30. I see you have the board but the description says it contains a different chip b5502c20. Do you have the c30?

We also have this PCB with Main Controller IC of b5502c30. When you order, please note you need the b5502c30 one.
In fact, for this PCB swap, just need the donor PCB has the same board number 100535537 as yours. Then you need move your original PCB’s BIOS to the replacement PCB. The 8pins (4 pins on each sides) with 25P05VP、25P10VP、25F512、25F1024、25F1024AN、SST25VF512、SST25VF010, etc. are the BIOS.
Different Main Controller IC PCB can be used as same.

I received my board today, transfered the bios, but the drive is not powering up, is there anything else that needs to be transfered? The board I received does not have all components matching up, only 2 of the 3 main ic’s

In fact, for this PCB swap, just need the donor PCB has the same board number as yours. Also just need swap BIOS.
Please add more tin to solder the BIOS firmer and confirm you soldered the BIOS in right direction.

Thanks! I did have it in the right direction, just not enough solder.

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Possible Hard Drive Disappeared Failure

Articles / 2012-10-03

Q: So I just completed a clean install of Windows 7 and I was installing some software that was originally on my primary HDD to my secondary HDD ,and the installation was taking so much longer than usual, The progress bar was almost full then it slowed down, then completely stopped, so I just gave it some more time. I opened my browser (Opera) to go on youtube and pass the time but my speed dial was gone! and the “Speed Dial File” is located on my secondary HDD, so I thought to myself that either the file is corrupt or something happened to the hard drive. I checked “Computer” and sure enough its gone! Its gone on both Computer and Disk Management, but for some reason is detected by BIOS. its the “Seagate Barracuda 7200 3 TB 7200RPM ST3000DM001” This happened after only after 1 month of use. I have over 1.5 TB of data on that hard drive, and I pretty much install everything on that drive, I have a back up but my data is constantly changing, I wanted a RAID setup but I really dont have the money for that.

Seagate Barracuda 7200 3 TB 7200RPM SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST3000DM001 ($146 on Amazon.com)

Is there anything at all I can do? Is my data 100% lost? An help would be appreciated.

Specs:
ASUS M4A88T-M Motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 7200 320 GB
Seagate Barracuda 7200 3 TB 7200RPM ST3000DM001
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz
Rosewill Stallion Series RD500-2DB 500W ATX12V Power Supply
SAPPHIRE Radeon 6950 OC Edition
Kingston ValueRAM 4GB 1333MHz
Windows 7 Ultimate X64

so I just rebooted my PC and the hard drive is back! Works just as good but what if it happens again? is this a sign of failure?

A: I would suggest you to change the sata cable and the power one from the psu see if that fix the issue adding this check if there is a new bios for those big drive on asus

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