So my WD80EFZX has just died. It doesn't spin, but I hear a faint tick every few seconds when I power the computer on.

Can I test to see if it's the PCB? I saw a video of one guy testing the resistance on some resistors near the power connector. Should I try that first? What about a PCB swap? Can I possibly swap PCB's with another drive of the same make and model?

I really don't want to have this drive be a wash.

I do have some spare WDRED10TB's on me, the PCB is different so I haven't tested those on this drive, anyone know if that will work?

Thanks in advance guys!

Do you hear the motor of the platters spin? If yes, almost sure it's not a PCB problem.
If it starts to spin and spin down usually it's a head problem, or eventually a firmware problem.
Need to be diagnosed with proper tools.

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i think this case is Head stuck on the platter. if you have important data inside the drive pls. contact proffesional DR person. don't use youtube videos as a guide. if this is useless HDD you can play with it after waching youtube video.

good luck

Judging by the model it's Hitachi Helium-filled drive, data is probably unrecoverable(unless you can find somebody who's willing to work on these)

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Try percussive maintenance.

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This is a 3.5 drive .... I don't think heads would be stuck to the platter .... There is some chances that PCB have damaged component like spindle controller. I would start with PCB swap + swapping all ROM/NVRam chips on the PCB to the new donor PCB ...

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Well,
Same PCB No Will Work ,Not Any Random PCB .You Will Also Need To Swap The ROM Or Read And Program Donor Board .I Would Suggest You Give It To A DR Professional ,

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@talisman22, if you want to test the PCB, I can show you the voltage test points. Just upload a detailed photo or CCD scan of the component side.

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Hi all, I just stumbled across this wonderful forum after searching for more info on these WD80EFZX drives. I have 6 of these drives in my NAS and two of them failed so far. They failed within a week of each other. Luckily, I've been replacing them quickly so RAID was able to recover and I didn't suffer any data loss yet (knock on wood).

What are the chances that the rest of my drives are going to fail as well? I think they're all from the same batch because I bought them all at the same time few years ago and they were all the same model.

Also, one thing I noticed about one of the drives that failed was that it would loudly "kick" when it was writing data. And by kick I mean... there was a large jolt to one side every now and then when it was writing data. What causes that? I know the actuator arm is most probably the cause but I don't understand why it would do that. And I've never seen a drive do that.

Thanks so much!

As for me better to do backup of data and replace rest of drives:)