Swapping controller board on a failed HD

Does anyone still swap HD controller boards (other than data recovery services) to recover a failed HD?

I recovered a few by doing this back in the days when 40GB was a lot, but last time I tried (with a 1TB I think) it didn't work at all.

I'm guessing I need to swap an EEPROM/FLASH from the failed board onto the new board, and hope that that's not the chip that died.

You can probably guess what's prompted this thought... my 3TB Seagate data drive just hiccuped, then Windows refused to even boot until I unplugged it. At least I had a backup that was only a week old; it failed on the afternoon that my weekly over-night backup runs, of course.

 

Wow - I just posted a reply and it completely vanished - it's not my day!

The only warning of an issue was Windows doing a few odd crashes that day, followed by locking up. Then Windows refused to start again, and I noticed the drive did not show in the POST. Windows is installed on an SSD, by the way. The Seagate did not even spin up when powered and when I removed it from the PC, everything worked again.

Hence I think controller failure. It is the very drive mentioned in that article, from the right (or wrong!) date.

In some of the comments I noticed someone saying that they tried moving the controller board, but that the same fault moved with the PCB. That would tend to indicate that I'm right about it being the controller.

Anyway, it's more an academic question because I don't need to recover this particular HD. If I did, then I have another three identical HDs still working (probably because they only get connected when I need them - they are kept in an archive antistatic box!)