unounotreS

It's not that. I'm only trying all possibilities I can... I tried the 'swap' of firmware with soldering and de-soldering on PCB, to buy a PCB on internet, to take it to an especialist... Now I know what's failing on the HDD and the PCB is the part that is failing. They say that they have to swap the rotor chip, bufer chip and controller chip for make it work. If I have the 'ST_M13FQBL' problem, it's possible to fix the HDD by reconfiguring the Firmware chip? Because it can't communicate with the bios...

Hi! I took the HDD to a HDD recovery shop and they tell me that the problem is in the PCB. Well, but they want 850$ for fix it... Are they crazy??? The mechanical parts are good but they say that to fix the pcb they will have to swap the chips from another PCB to mine...

The problem I have is that I don't know what's my problem. I just post this issue in many forums and I never had a valid answer. I called the technical service of Seagate and they only suggest me the Rma method. Tell me what can I do?

Hi again! Some sites on internet says that if you change the firmware of the damaged PCB to a new PCB it can fix the problem. Now, I have two PCBs, the first one is the PCB that cames with the HDD (which is failing now with the ST_13FQBL error), the second one is the one I owned over Internet. I'm going to do the soldering solution that un-solder the firmware of the old pcb and solder it to the new. Do you think that this solution can help me? If I mount a new PCB to my HDD it can definively crash the HDD? I have to say that the HDD mechanical parts are working properly and no bad sounds or clicks are showed. I tried the 'hyperterminal solution' and did not work anyway.

I just tried to swap the pcb with the owned from ebay but it doesn't work. I tried to connect both PCBs to the motherboard without the HDD arrached on and the result is the same, in bios appears as a st_m13fqbl. Do you think that if I transfer the "old" rom to the new pcb it will work again??? Thxxx

Hi to everybody! First of all, I want to tell you that I'm from Spain and my English level is not too good! So, a year ago, I bought a ST32000542AS hdd (2 TB, 5.900rpm, Sata2...) and, just 3 weeks ago it begun to fail. Windows doesn't recognizes it and BIOS gets a lot of time to show the ST_M13FQBL message (I suppose bios is trying to identificate it). I tried the famous method to fix a HDD of 7200.11 series with Hyperterminal, USB RS232 conversor and all these stuff but with no success... What can I do? I tried to buy a ST32000542AS board with the same result. It's so important the info. inside it. I have to tell that the plates spins ok and doesn't make any bad noise or something like that. It doesn't clicks. The sound is very normal... Thanks and sorry again! I hope you've understanded me!