WD6401AALS PCB adaptation

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

I have two fried PCBs of 2x wd 6401AALS black edition that were working on a Raid1 config.

Board Number: 2060-701567-000
Main Controller IC: 88i8845E-BHY2
HDD Motor Combo IC: L7251 2.2
Western Digital PCB 2060-701567-000

I have got the replacement donor PCBs and require a PCB adaptation service. 

The SMOOTH chip is damaged on the side that drives the spindle motor. The side that controls the board’s switchmode power supplies, including the Vcore and Vio supplies for the MCU, is not damaged, so I would expect that the MCU has probably survived.

As i understand the "ROM’ on the board can be reconstructed using commercial data recovery software that accesses the hidden System Area on the platters and retrieves various firmware modules which are then reassembled into a ROM image which can then be written to the MCU’s flash memory.

This is a simple, single-click procedure which requires no soldering. That said, some firmware versions do not have the required ROM backup on the platters, so the procedure in those cases may require an MCU transplant, or some other software method which I don’t know. 

I was wondering if anyone is familiar with the specific version of drives and whether ROM can be reconstructed or it requires MCU transplant. In any case a reference to a reliable vendor for the adaptation is more than welcomed (vancouver canada).

Cheers

Steven

2

Hi, don’t know a lot about this,but you can try sending a private message to  fzabkar, he might be able to give you some advice.

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3

It is a Royal WD drive so the ROM image and modules should be on the platters. If you looking for someone in Vancouver call my pal Simon@ACEON Data Recovery, they should take care of it.

I am not sure if the adaptation takes single click to do. Procedure requires your drive to stay spinning while powered to gain access to platters for rom rebuild. If drive with new pcb clicks and spins down, well… How would you read service area then? It may require test fitting other ROM versions for that, but writing an image of external type of ROM into MCU. We install resistors onto designated positions to force MCU into using ROM externally. Can get tricky sometimes.

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4

Thanks a lot. Do you know if PCB revision A and later revision P1  are compatible?

5

That shouldnt matter I dont think

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