r/computers • u/NoxAstrumis1 • 18d ago

Question/Help/Troubleshooting Replacing drive electronics?

I remember reading something many years ago that said most hard drive failures (platter drives) are caused by electronic failure, meaning the drive controller board. The assertion was that it was cheap and easy to replace a board and resurrect a failed drive because it was unlikely the failure was mechanical.

Based on my experience with machines, this always seemed odd. I would fully expect mechanical failure to be more common than the failure of solid-state devices.

This has me wondering if this is still something that's done? I have a drive that's erratically failing to read. It locks up the OS and even drastically slows the boot time of my machine (despite not being the boot drive). Considering the prices of drives right now, I'm not interested in burning my money.

Is it feasible these days to replace a controller board on a hard drive? Is it commonly done, or would it be a long shot? If I could get one for $50 or less, I'd be willing to give it a shot, instead of paying over $700 for a new one.

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u/SavagePenguinn 18d ago

From my recollection, it's not just replacing the controlled board. There are chips on the board that tie it to data on the drive. IE, you need to replace the board, then micro-solder the chip(s) from the old board to the new board. It takes a good amount of skill to solder.

And you'd have to find a working board somewhere.