I broke the ground pin off of a BIOS chip (Woops). Will it still work?

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Proudfeet

New member
Hi,

I am trying to recover some data from a broken hard drive (Western Digital WD10EZEX) and was swapping the suspected broken pcb (REV A 2060-771829-005) out with a new one.

I was following this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng_0WaTzKmY&t=62s) on how to swap the BIOS chip over to the donor board when removing the BIOS chip I broke of the leg from pin 4 :cry: .

It seems like it require some rocket surgery to attach the leg back on and there's no easy way to hold it back on.

I found out that pin 4 on the BIOS chip in question (Winbond W25Q20BW https://datasheetspdf.com/datasheet/W25Q20BW.html) is the ground pin.

Can I just solder my BIOS chip to the donor board with no ground pin connected? Or is this incredibly naive and wont work?
 
pclab

pclab

Moderator
Hi

The best way is try to read the ROM with a ROM programmer (try to make contact between the pins) and make a copy.
After that you can retry to solder it to donor PCB or take it to someone a little more experienced with soldering and he might still solder it.
If the ROM is lost/danified it still will be recoverable, but it will also increase a lot the price of the recovery.
 
lcoughey

lcoughey

Moderator
If your data is of any value to you, it is best to stop and consider sending to a data recovery professional and be very thankful that your hard drive is a Western Digital and not a Seagate.
 
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Proudfeet

New member
Thanks, yeah I think it might be beyond my amateurish capabilities. I might end up sending to a repair shop thanks for the advice.
 
Jared

Jared

Administrator
Staff member
Hopefully, there is a copy of the ROM modules in the service area. I can't recall ever needing to rebuild the ROM of a Tressels family WD drive (they're pretty uncommon) so I can't remember offhand if they have a backup of it.

What was originally going on with the drive before you attempted the PCB replacement?
 
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