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 Post subject: WD6400 PCB problem - can I do something ?
PostPosted: February 16th, 2019, 7:13 
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Joined: February 16th, 2019, 6:50
Posts: 6
Location: France
Hello everyone,

I have been reading the forum for a while now, and I think I may need an advice.

I used to backup on this hdd long time ago : external storage but I don't remember the psu power. Anyway, I came back home and it was burnt, did not work at all. I extracted the hdd and forgot it. Found it this week and spend some time reading and testing.

I may have done some mistakes, you tell me.

The hdd model is WD6400AAKS and the PCB 2060-701537-003 Rev A.

I plugged it and powered : Gnome-disks recognized it as a 1T0 hdd but testdisk did not ; the hdd would turn for few seconds then stopped.

I read this article : http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php? ... bc4df1057f
I clean the contacts. Now it turns smoothly : but no programm recognize it at all.

Here come some pics.

Attachment:
File comment: contact cleaned
1.png
1.png [ 4.26 MiB | Viewed 8120 times ]


Attachment:
File comment: It is not really burnt.
2.png
2.png [ 3.92 MiB | Viewed 8120 times ]


I don't know what to do anymore. I think I can't switch the pcb on this model. Could someone give me some clue about what to do? Something DIY?


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 Post subject: Re: WD6400 PCB problem - can I do something ?
PostPosted: February 16th, 2019, 10:38 
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Joined: June 16th, 2018, 12:09
Posts: 488
Location: Turkey
Check diods first. I think D3 D4

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 Post subject: Re: WD6400 PCB problem - can I do something ?
PostPosted: February 16th, 2019, 10:48 
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Joined: April 3rd, 2011, 0:19
Posts: 2003
Location: Providence, RI
HddDonorMarket wrote:
Check diods first. I think D3 D4


OP said "Now it turns smoothly " so if the drive is spinning up it's not a diode problem. That would short out and turn off the power supply.

@lesyl, you are correct about that PCB not being one you can easily replace. It's missing the U12 ROM chip meaning the ROM code is embedded in the main IC chip. A very closely matched donor PCB may have a close enough code to still work, but it'd need to be VERY closely matched (like manufactured the same week) and require a bit of luck.

Someone with proper tools like PC-3000 can rebuild the code and set up a new PCB fairly easily though.

However, you should know that if the drive is spinning up your issue is unlikely to be related to the PCB anyway. It's more likely that the preamp or heads were damaged. Maybe some damage to the firmware code, bad sectors, etc. causing it to go unresponsive.

I really think you should seek out professional recovery if you value the data.

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 Post subject: Re: WD6400 PCB problem - can I do something ?
PostPosted: February 16th, 2019, 11:49 
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Joined: February 16th, 2019, 6:50
Posts: 6
Location: France
Thanks for your answers.

@HddDonorMarket, I don't really know how to check those diods you were talking about. If it occurs that I have to do so, I will find someone near with the proper device.

@data-medics, data is kind of valuable, sentimental value, but not enough for professional recovery as I assume it would cost hundreds of $/£. I may try the PCB swap. I read somewhere about swapping when the hdd is powered on (guy called fzabkar on tomshardware but I can't find the post back).
Any other clue before I go looking for this very rare piece of hardware? I hope I could I find one in the same production period.


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 Post subject: Re: WD6400 PCB problem - can I do something ?
PostPosted: February 16th, 2019, 12:50 
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Joined: June 16th, 2018, 12:09
Posts: 488
Location: Turkey
My misunderstood. Yep. Not diod problem4

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Donor Drives hdddonormarket.com


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 Post subject: Re: WD6400 PCB problem - can I do something ?
PostPosted: February 16th, 2019, 17:41 
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Joined: April 3rd, 2011, 0:19
Posts: 2003
Location: Providence, RI
lesyl wrote:
I read somewhere about swapping when the hdd is powered on (guy called fzabkar on tomshardware but I can't find the post back).


What you read about is called a hot swap, and it's not going to help you. To make that work you'd still need a working PCB programmed with the correct ROM code, and you'd need a professional tool to read/write firmware modules from the patient drive and write them to a donor hot start drive. It has nothing at all to do with a case like yours. Starting up the PCB on a different drive and moving it over to your drive will fail to access user data 100% of the time because it'll be using the wrong translator (and a hundred other wrong modules) which is totally unique to each drive.

Your only hope is to find a very close donor HDD (e.g. same model, same firmware, similar DCM, very close date of manufacture) and hope you get lucky and it's a close enough ROM code. We've managed to do this several times for WD HDDs with totally lost PCB and no backup of the code in the system area. But, it helps that we have a firmware database of thousands of backed up drives and tools to quickly write different collected ROM codes directly to the PCBs.

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 Post subject: Re: WD6400 PCB problem - can I do something ?
PostPosted: February 17th, 2019, 9:54 
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Joined: February 16th, 2019, 6:50
Posts: 6
Location: France
I am going to to take a chance on that PCB swap. I found this page: https://www.shoprbc.com/images/products ... _31784.pdf

I don't know if I can trust what is said about Model Number Suffix. So my question is: does the Model Number Suffix is important in PCB swapping? What if I find a donor from same factory/date but different Model Number Suffix?

Thank you very much for your advice and explanations.


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 Post subject: Re: WD6400 PCB problem - can I do something ?
PostPosted: February 17th, 2019, 12:30 
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Joined: February 16th, 2019, 6:50
Posts: 6
Location: France
I read on the site of a PCB and HDD dealer that
Quote:
The DCM is not a factor when swapping PCB’s on Western Digital drives.


They recommand
Quote:
matching the full model number (WD1600JD-00HBC0) and also the PCB part number which is normally located near the interface on a white label (2061-701267-200 AK).


As it will be some $ investment, I would prefer to get all the chances on my side. What do you think of this assertion?

And is there people that actually succeeded with a simple PCB swap with post-2005/pre-2010 Western digital?


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 Post subject: Re: WD6400 PCB problem - can I do something ?
PostPosted: February 19th, 2019, 12:50 
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Joined: February 16th, 2019, 6:50
Posts: 6
Location: France
Spildit wrote:
Do you still have the ORIGINAL PCB of the drive ? I assume that what did BURN was the xternal enclosure, correct ?


I do; but I don't know if components have been damaged or not.

Spildit wrote:
-plug the drive by SATA and check S.M.A.R.T. with something like Victoria for windows ? Can you run a surface scan ?


I will try that asap, hoping that hdd soes not have bad heads or bad sectors. Thanks for hddsuperclone tip. I fear WDMarvel DEMO will be useless cause the rom is not stored on a specific chip. I don't have such a clip for the main controler.

I will try a last shot next week-end.


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 Post subject: Re: WD6400 PCB problem - can I do something ?
PostPosted: February 23rd, 2019, 9:31 
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Joined: February 16th, 2019, 6:50
Posts: 6
Location: France
Hello gurus,

Well I finally came back back to this hdd and good new: it is recognized AND working fine this time! Copy done.

I don't know why but it does not really matter as it works, even for science sake :)

Thank you very much for your help and advices.


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