Data Extraction Service

Procedure

If you believe your media device's PCB is faulty, follow these steps:

1. Purchase this item.
2. Send your original PCB or, preferably, the entire media device to us at: Donor Drives Repairs 43 Alpha Park, Highland Heights, OH 44143.

About PCB Firmware

Most of the hard drive circuit boards possess ROM, NV-RAM or Controller chip. That chip holds unique data, required for access to hard drive System Area. We will call this data “PCB Firmware”. With PCB Firmware missing or incorrect, there is no access to hard drive System Area, therefore no access to user data. Because of that issue, a simple swap of circuit boards will not make a faulty hard drive operational. There may be a need to transfer the PCB Firmware onto a new PCB.

In many cases, the ROM or NV-RAM chip is external, and it can be physically transferred (soldered) onto a new circuit board. In other cases, the PCB Firmware is located in Controller chip, and without a professional BGA Rework Station, it is impossible to move that chip over onto a new PCB. Moreover, that same controller chip is often the problem in original PCB. In such case, a new one must be reprogrammed with correct PCB Firmware, which Donor Drives can generate, having access to original failed hard drive.

About Bad Sectors and Logical Failures

Often, after hard drive undergoes a PCB replacement, clients are still unable to access data due to different logical failures that occur when hard drive first fails. For example, logical volume won't open and asks to format hard drive, missing data or no data at all, hard drive "not initialized", bad sectors, etc. These and other failures may be frustrating for regular customers but are easily processed by professional hardware and software tools at our disposal.

Service Description.

This Service is geared towards extracting the data from the hard drives that had one of the following failures.

a) PCB Failure

b) Bad Sectors

c) Logical failures, not related to firmware.

This service package does not cover any firmware or mechanical failures. Upon successful service completion you will receive:

a) External Media, with all the data retrieved from the original hard drive. The size of the media depends on the amount of retrieved data.

b) Original hard drive. All hard drives are returned in the condition they arrived for the service.

Should you have any question about the service, process, or proceedures - call us at 1.800.733.0978