Swapping circuit boards for an internal hard drive

My story may be a bit long and roundabout, so please try and bear with me as I explain.
My PowerMac G5 is 4.5 years old and over the past few months, the DVD and my secondary internal hard drive, both the originals that came with my computer, have been slowly dying. I finally replaced the DVD drive the other day and was little by little copying the data off my secondary internal drive before it completely failed. One thing that seemed to help the internal drive run more smooth was unplugging the power cable and plugging it back in. A worker at an Apple store's Genius Bar also suggested swapping each internal drive to the bay that the other was originally in, to see if that helped at all.
Anyways, in the end, the drive was giving me so much trouble and I had unplugged/plugged the power cable so many times that eventually the part of the circuit board that holds the pin connectors straight broke off, so now I had no way to get my data off the slowly failing drive. Another visit to the Genius Bar and I was told that the drive was as good as done, but not wanting to believe that the majority of my film projects were gone forever, I contacted a store across the street from my old NYU dorm called Digital Society. They told me that the circuit board on the drive needed to be replaced and that the new board had to be taken from an identical drive. I soon realized that the primary/system drive of my G5 was in fact identical. So, after running Time Machine, purchasing new primary and secondary internal drives, re-installing the OS and doing a Time Machine restore - which was flawless - I took my two drives back to Digital Society where they swapped the circuit boards rather quickly.
Now that I'm back home, I was easily able to recover all my data from my failing drive... only after having its circuit board replaced, the drive is showing no signs whatsoever of the read/write difficulties and failures that it had been showing prior to the circuit board swap, which leads me to a few questions
a) Was it really the drive that had a problem, or the circuit board itself? Is there anywhere I could buy just a circuit board without having to buy a new drive just to get a circuit board? The drives in question are 400 gig Hitachi Deskstar, model #HDS724040KLSA80. While I'm not entirely sure the once failing drive should be trusted again, my old system drive - which now has a busted circuit board on it - still works perfectly fine.
b) If I'm able to get a new circuit board, how easy is it to replace myself? The guy at Digital Society did it very quickly and for a price of $120. Are there any video tutorials?
Thanks!

Lot's of good question Will,
Hard drives are not what they used to be, if your work is important I'd replace them every 3 years & have 2 backups in the meantime.
I doubt you can get the circuit boards separate without buying a while questionable drive.
If I'm able to get a new circuit board, how easy is it to replace myself? The guy at Digital Society did it very quickly and for a price of $120.
1 TB 3 year warranty $99...
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Samsung/HD103SJ/
1 TB 7 year warranty...
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Samsung/HE103UJ/
More cheaper drives...
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/3.5-SerialATA/WesternDigitalCaviar

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Swapping circuit boards for an internal hard drive

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