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I have two Seagate Barracuda 500 GB (ST3500641AS with Firmware 3.BTD) external hard drives, both of which are same in terms of model and firmware, one of the hard drives has a PCB issue and clicks constantly, (I believe that its because it cannot find the first tracks, but i could be wrong). I took the other hard drive's (the good one) PCB and switch it with the bad hard drive's PCB, (which did not resolve the issue). Now the good hard drive's PCB has the exact same issue, after re-switching the PCBs (the good PCB is on the good hard drive again). Both hard drives do not have any fried or damaged board components but it seems something was written to the ROM and has caused this issue.

Is there any way to flash a rom (since it seems to be a software issue and not a hardware issue) or reset the hard drive PCB?

I have tried using some Data recovery software and Parition wizards, but they do not see the hard drives at all, and therefore does not work

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  • check hdd-parts.com/take-photos.html for some interesting details. It explains why your exchange could not work, and also how to transfer firmware
    – Aganju
    Commented Dec 21, 2015 at 4:27

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so I never quite got either drive working again, but because I have gotten some knowledge about hard drives, since my original question asking date. There is this video by Linus Tech Tips that goes into Hard drive recovery, and mainly the software side (it is more or less an advertisement for a product towards the end, but the information is still very valid). Don't waste $1000 on Data Recovery

There is an 8-bit ROM chip that holds the variance information for hard drives on all PCB boards, and if that data starts to be incorrect, corrupted, or changed, it can heavily damage the PCB operation. Which is what happened when I switched the 2 PCBs. The best way is to use tools that can read, and edit those ROM chips, and have the knowledge to do so. (Which I don't).

So hopefully, that answers my question, thanks @Aganju for the comment 3 years ago.

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