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Chip; this would go up in smoke and leave a pin hole or a very big mess on or
over the IC
MICRO CONTROLLER
These rarely fail unless there has been an extreme hit by power such as a
lightning strike that may cause voltage through the IDE Cable. If this does fail
you would normally find visible damage
TRACKS
Internal track are the thin Copper ribbons that run through the board that
connect each component these can be easily damaged bay any of the above
case scenarios, but one of the most common that I have seen is Corrosion
Below is a great Example of how quickly chemicals in the air from industrial
workshops or even sulfa in the air from volcanic regions can cause havoc... but
for most residential computer hard drives its condensation that damages a PCB
In this example this PCB was only 6 months old
WARNING
IF YOU CHANGE A PRINTED
CIRCUIT BOARD WITH A NON MATCHING PCB... SUCH AS DIFFERENT
FIRMWARE, LAYOUT, OR MICRO CONTROLLER NUMBERS, YOU WILL RUN
A HIGH RISK OF FAILURE AND FURTHER DAMAGE!
Yes there's a high chance...
YOU WILL SEE SMOKE!!!!!!
If you have an exact match to the PCB you want to attempt swapping, the risk will be
minimal but what allot of people don’t realize, is that code can change overtime even
with exact matching parts.
What this means is... if you were to purchase two NEW exact hard drives at the
same time from the same batch and then swapped there PCB's to each other,
you would most likely be successful!
