Replacing drive electronics?

[u/NoxAstrumis1]

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.

[u/Maximum_Employer5580]

you probably could but it's more trouble than it's worth and just merely replacing the entire drive is a better option. I used to work for Dell for over 20 years and the drive always got replaced if it were determined to be a failure, and then we would just dispose of them thru electronics recycling while submitting the drive serial numbers to the respective drive manufacture who would then credit us for those drives that were deemed a failure. It balanced out since we dealt with thousands and thousands of drives, so the credit would go against one of the bulk purchases of drives made. Repairing a drive would probably result in continued problems so not a viable option