Advice needed on solder paste for HDD controller board re-work

[ScarsUnseen]

Using a heat gun, what is the most appropriate type of solder paste for transplanting an IC on a hard drive controller board?

BACKSTORY: A SATA drive's old controller board burned out and I have to replace it. I know that in order to be successful, I have to transplant the firmware chip from the old board to the new board in order for the data to be accessible.

I have moderate soldering experience (mostly replacing individual defective components other than ICs), good vision, and excellent fine motor control, but this will be my first experience with a heat gun, as well as a learning experience (I will be practicing on expendable components before diving into this project)-
this is likely the unit that I will be using for this job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLWmTaymgx0

TL;DR- I have no experience with solder paste and need to know how to choose the correct type for an IC transplant on a HDD controller board.

The drive is a WD3200AAJS.

Thanks for reading.

-Jaime

 

[Old Hippie]

Don't bother.

Nobody replaces the chip but I have heard some successes by replacing the entire board.

BUT it has to be the EXACT same board or it doesn't work.

Look here for more info but it's not worth the time or trouble.

 

[ScarsUnseen]

Replacing the board works on IDE drive, not SATA.

For SATA drive, you're absolutely required to transfer the firmware chip to the new controller board in order to make the data accessible, unless you find a replacement hard drive with the same EXACT manufacture date (which still is not a perfect method).

 

[ScarsUnseen]

The hard drive was COMPLETELY dead.. as dead as dead can be. No disc spinning, no power, NOTHING. The old controller board looks like it shorted out. There's small amounts of brown crustiness on it.

After replacing the controller board, the hard drive powers up and spins like normal, but Windows (and Ubuntu) won't detect it unless I give it the proper firmware by transplanting that chip.

 

[ilikecake]

I assume you are taking a new/working controller board and swapping the firmware chip from the dead board onto it. This would then involve removing the firmware chips from both boards, and putting the old firmware chip on the new board. What type of IC is it? (Does it have 'feet' like this, pads on the bottom like this, or BGA?)

This is the heat gun that I use for soldering/desoldering. I set the temperature to ~350C. If the boards you are soldering use lead free solder (they probably do), you will probably need to set it higher.

Swapping the chip will probably involve three steps.

1. Desolder the chip from the original board. Either pick a heat gun tip that can heat up all the leads at the same time, or keep the heat gun moving around all the pins. Use tweasers to check for the solder to reflow and immediately remove the chip and the heatgun. For the stuff that I do, it usually takes around 10-20 seconds to get the solder to flow.

2. Clean the pads. Use solder wick and a normal soldering iron to wick away all of the old solder.

3. Resolder/reflow the chip onto the new board. If the IC has feet, soldering it onto the new board is pretty easy. Put a bit of solder on a single pad and solder the IC into place and make sure it is aligned. When you are happy with the alignment, add solder to the rest of the pins.

If the IC only has pads on the bottom, it gets a bit tricky. I will typically add a bit of solder to each pad on the PCB. It is important to add the same amount of solder to each pad, and not use too much solder. Then position the chip roughly where it should go above the PCB and put the heat gun on it. It is usually pretty obvious when the solder melts, as the chip will settle into place. If you had the IC aligned with the pads on the board, it should settle into the right place. It is kinda neat that the IC will actually align itself if it is close.

If the IC is a BGA type, then I don't know. I have never tried to solder BGA chips. I expect it would be similar to the ICs without feet, but I couldn't say for sure.

I typically just use normal (leaded) solder when reflowing chips. It seems to work okay for the stuff that I have done. I have tried using solder paste a few times, but I did not have too much success with it. If you need to use paste, I would recommend a leaded type like this as (I think) it has a lower melting point and will be easier to reflow without burning the board. You can apply a little bit to each pad with a toothpick. Once again, it is important to use about the same amount of paste for each pad.

Flux also seems to help sometimes, but make sure that you don't use too much. When you heat up the chip to reflow it, if there is too much flux underneath, it will boil and push the chip out of alignment.

Sorry for the long reply. I had to learn all of this through trial and error, so I thought I would share some tips.

 

[Old Hippie]

Replacing the board works on IDE drive, not SATA.

For SATA drive, you're absolutely required to transfer the firmware chip to the new controller board in order to make the data accessible, unless you find a replacement hard drive with the same EXACT manufacture date (which still is not a perfect method).

I totally agree but if the info is that valuable a drive recovery place would be a much better option.

 

[ScarsUnseen]

I totally agree but if the info is that valuable a drive recovery place would be a much better option.

Why? Doesn't lab/clean room recovery usually cost minimum $1000? I'm also attaining knowledge by doing it myself. If I can learn how to do it, why not?

 

[ScarsUnseen]

I assume you are taking a new/working controller board and swapping the firmware chip from the dead board onto it. This would then involve removing the firmware chips from both boards, and putting the old firmware chip on the new board. What type of IC is it? (Does it have 'feet' like this, pads on the bottom like this, or BGA?)

This is the heat gun that I use for soldering/desoldering. I set the temperature to ~350C. If the boards you are soldering use lead free solder (they probably do), you will probably need to set it higher.

Swapping the chip will probably involve three steps.

1. Desolder the chip from the original board. Either pick a heat gun tip that can heat up all the leads at the same time, or keep the heat gun moving around all the pins. Use tweasers to check for the solder to reflow and immediately remove the chip and the heatgun. For the stuff that I do, it usually takes around 10-20 seconds to get the solder to flow.

2. Clean the pads. Use solder wick and a normal soldering iron to wick away all of the old solder.

3. Resolder/reflow the chip onto the new board. If the IC has feet, soldering it onto the new board is pretty easy. Put a bit of solder on a single pad and solder the IC into place and make sure it is aligned. When you are happy with the alignment, add solder to the rest of the pins.

If the IC only has pads on the bottom, it gets a bit tricky. I will typically add a bit of solder to each pad on the PCB. It is important to add the same amount of solder to each pad, and not use too much solder. Then position the chip roughly where it should go above the PCB and put the heat gun on it. It is usually pretty obvious when the solder melts, as the chip will settle into place. If you had the IC aligned with the pads on the board, it should settle into the right place. It is kinda neat that the IC will actually align itself if it is close.

If the IC is a BGA type, then I don't know. I have never tried to solder BGA chips. I expect it would be similar to the ICs without feet, but I couldn't say for sure.

I typically just use normal (leaded) solder when reflowing chips. It seems to work okay for the stuff that I have done. I have tried using solder paste a few times, but I did not have too much success with it. If you need to use paste, I would recommend a leaded type like this as (I think) it has a lower melting point and will be easier to reflow without burning the board. You can apply a little bit to each pad with a toothpick. Once again, it is important to use about the same amount of paste for each pad.

Flux also seems to help sometimes, but make sure that you don't use too much. When you heat up the chip to reflow it, if there is too much flux underneath, it will boil and push the chip out of alignment.

Sorry for the long reply. I had to learn all of this through trial and error, so I thought I would share some tips.

Thank you for such a thorough response! I'm not a very hardware-oriented person, but my partner is. I will show her your post later. I'm much better with software than hardware for this particular situation, but this is really an excellent learning opportunity for me as well! This sounds like info she's been seeking. I, myself, am awful at soldering. We are learning through trial and error also! (Pretty much how I've learned to do everything with computers.)

 

[Lost-Benji]

The best way I have found to swapping small IC's is with De-Soldering Solder, yeah I know, a bit of an oxymoron. This solder looks like conventional solder but has a melting point of about 70 degrees.
Heat job/chip with hot iron and flow this new solder onto all the joints then once it is over all pins, you can lift with ease and with time as it takes a lot longer to cool/solidify.

To place new chip down, clean all pads with solder-wick and then do same with chip to remove excess solder from its legs.

Now put down on board/pads and apply normal heat to a pin keeping the chip square. Now do the far opposite pin to secure it to the board. Now slowly do the rest with a fine-tip iron.

If you do things fairly quickly, you won't get too many issues with oxidation of the pads or chip legs so flux is not a real need. If you do, then look at getting a "FibreGlass" pen/pencil. These have a bundle of fibre glass in a pen-like holder that you use a bit like a eraser on a pencil to clean the surfaces. Just make sure you get rid of the dust safely or you will be itchy for a week...




Now, for the board swapping Vs. chip swapping.
You might find that if you swap board only and then run a data recovery program that you will recover the data.

 

[Old Hippie]

Why? Doesn't lab/clean room recovery usually cost minimum $1000? I'm also attaining knowledge by doing it myself. If I can learn how to do it, why not?

If it's just for shits and giggles I understand and have had many learning experiences like that myself.

These types of recovery may go awry but I can only assume the info isn't valuable because you didn't have a back-up.

As usual it all comes down to how valuable the data is to you.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.

 

[ScarsUnseen]

It's not my hard drive. It belongs to a local music promotion guy who has ALL of his promo materials on this hard drive. I told him that I could attempt this task and it may or may not be successful, or he'd have to ship it to a lab and pay a TON more as other places have mentioned also to him. He knows I haven't done quite an extensive data recovery before like this, because I told him so. But he told me to go for it. I'm pretty confident in my abilities and my partner's, but we'll see!

 

[Old Hippie]

It's not my hard drive

Cool!

The learning experience gets better when it's not your stuff.

I know my fumble fingers wouldn't have a chance but I'm anxious to know how it works out for ya.

 

[ScarsUnseen]

Sooo...

Before attempting this project, my partner and I successfully removed and reattached IC's on about 100 spare parts for practice with no problems at all.

While removing the IC from this controller board, it turns out that there were 5 metal "pads" under the chip that made it virtually impossible to remove the chip successfully.

I have been unable to find ANY documentation across the entire internet about IC's with metal attachments underneath. Anyone ever hear of this?

My final option is to find the same exact hard drive with a close manufacturer date to match the firmware. Otherwise, off to a lab.

 

[Zolishoru]

...
I have been unable to find ANY documentation across the entire internet about IC's with metal attachments underneath. Anyone ever hear of this?
...

Thermal(cooling)pads; pretty common stuff for low-medium(1-5W) dissipation. Example of packaging(.pdf):
http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/mpds043e/mpds043e.pdf
To easily remove-resolder an IC with thermal pads at home, you need to heat up the board from the bottom, and use a(borrowed) hot-air rework station.
On second thought, the IC you described, looks more like a motor controller then a firmware IC...

 

[ScarsUnseen]

SUCCESS!!

I ordered a hard drive off ebay with a close manufacturing date to the broken one I have.

The broken one is from Sept 30, 2007. The hdd I got off ebay is from Nov 30, 2007.

I put the controller board from the ebay hdd onto the broken one... PROBLEM SOLVED.

Windows detects the drive without any problems whatsoever. I'm doing the data transfer via Ubuntu LiveCD because I find it much more stable than large data transferring within Windows.

All 218GB is being recovered from the 320GB drive.

Thanks, everyone! I really appreciate your help and time! I hope someone finds this thread useful in the future.

 

[Old Hippie]

SUCCESS!!

I ordered a hard drive off ebay with a close manufacturing date to the broken one I have.

The broken one is from Sept 30, 2007. The hdd I got off ebay is from Nov 30, 2007.

I put the controller board from the ebay hdd onto the broken one... PROBLEM SOLVED.

Replacing the board works on IDE drive, not SATA.

Say what?

 

[ScarsUnseen]

All the sources I read said that it works almost 100% of the time with IDE controller boards and hardly ever works with SATA controller board, unless you find a close manufacturing date, which still probably won't work. However, in my case, it did work. =)

 

[Old Hippie]

I know it's worked before but I didn't feel like it was worth my time to look for links and just agreed with ya.

AAR, I'm glad it worked out for ya and maybe now is the time to show your buddy how to do backups?