www.deadharddrive.com

[darlingm]

I have a Hitachi Travelstar 30GB laptop drive that isn't spinning up, and therefore isn't being recognized by BIOS. I'm pretty certain it's the PCB causing the issue since there weren't any weird sounds before or after the drive's death, and the gold leads beneath one of the chips appears scorched a little bit, although not very badly.

I'm matching the P/N (07N8326), the model number (IC25N030ATCS04-0), and the MLC number (H32687). Matching these three, of course, ensures I will get a PCB that handled identically sized drives.

Although I think I found a match for this on eBay, does anyone have one of these?

Assuming it's the PCB, should I be able to swap the two and be up and running? Or would this model drive require me to do a swap of the ROMs?

If I have to have the ROMs swapped, how could I go about finding someone local to the Detroit MI area who could do it for me? I've done some soldering, but it's been quite a while, and I wouldn't want to chance it.

[darlingm]

Pictures of the top and bottom of the drive, and the underneath of the PCB that can only be seen when removed from the HD can be seen at:

http://sigma.homeunix.com/hitachi

The full P/N on the drive is "07N8326H326870P35". Is the "P35" part at the end important? It looks like that could be a firmware version, perhaps. Does that need to match on my replacement drive/PCB? Or could I go with a "P32"?

[darlingm]

I got in a replacement PCB that looked like it should be an identical match to mine. The drive still isn't being recognized by BIOS.

Can anyone look at the pictures at:

http://sigma.homeunix.com/hitachi

Those pictures are of both the original drive and PCB, and the replacement PCB.

Did I find a good replacement, or did the "P35" need to match instead of the "P32" on the middle barcode?

Should any soldering need to be done, or should swapping the PCB have been everything I needed to do, assuming it is the PCB that is bad?