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Subject  :  IBM Fireball quick and dirty repair?
Author  :  Kim
Date  :  09 Jun, 2005 on 15:00
Got a friend that has a broken IBM Fireball Plus LM 20.4gb hard disk where the circuit part has burnt and he really badly needs some of the data from the disk (and no he didn't have any backups and knows now why he should try to improve his backup skills ).

What I found is some 30gb disk also from the Fireball Plus series; could I assume that I could take the circuit board from a 30gb unit and replace the broken one of the 20gb? Or is there too big difference in the microcode of the disks that it will render the content on the 20gb?

Here is the specs for the original 20gb unit:

IBM Fireball Plus LM 20.4gb hard disk
3.5 series
IBM P/N 09N0922
IBM FRU 37L5723
# of LBA's 39876480/12v 600/700mA

and here is the specs for the replacement 30gb unit:

IBM Fireball Plus LM 30gb hard disk
3.5 series
IBM P/N 09N0924
IBM FRU 09N0925
# of LBA's 5860000805/12v 600/700mA

I've done some circuit board replacements on IBM SCSI drives earlier; but that has been from the same series and same size and that worked fine. As well I've done it on Western. But, above there is a slight diff betwen the drives... so ideas suggestions or advice on above?


Subject  :  Re:IBM Fireball quick and dirty repair?
Author  :  Fahrvenugen
Date  :  09 Jun, 2005 on 17:31

Kim (09 Jun, 2005 15:15):

I've done some circuit board replacements on IBM SCSI drives earlier; but that has been from the same series and same size and that worked fine. As well I've done it on Western. But, above there is a slight diff betwen the drives... so ideas suggestions or advice on above?


I have no clue about the IBM drives, but I've managed to retrieve data off a Maxtor IDE drive doing what you've described. Using a circuit board from another Maxtor. In that case, the drives were different size, but both from the same series of drive.

Don't know if that will help or not.


Subject  :  Re:IBM Fireball quick and dirty repair?
Author  :  Kim
Date  :  22 Jun, 2005 on 06:56
Just want to report back that it was a success to switch circuit boards betwen the 20gb 30gb disk. So by this it was possible to copy out all the data from the disk.

Just in case if anyone wondered.


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