Hi All,
my 1.5TB WD1502FAEX HDD failed recently and it was diagnosed as having damaged heads. I'm having difficulty finding an identical 1.5TB sized HDD but have found plenty of lower capacity HDD's in that same model range such as 640MB and 1TB. Sorry for this dumb question but would they have the same identically sized heads as the 1.5TB version?

If the answer is no and I need to get an identical 1.5TB HDD, how close should the Serial Number be to the damaged HDD? is there a rough rule of thumb?

Rgs and thanks in advance.

Match the 3rd, 4th, and 5th number/letter of the serial. That should get you a matching set of heads for that drive.

the lower capacity models are likely to have less heads installed...
pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

is that irrespective of the size of the HDD? or only for the same sized HDD, 1.5TB, in my case?

Hi All,
I did some more research and for WD HDD's its the DCM number that's critical for a head replacement. According to this table: https://hddguru.com/articles/2006.02.17 ... k-Q-and-A/ only the 5th and 6th characters of the DCM code need to be the same.

However the other characters in the DCM provide other critical parameters as seen below:

1- Motor (H)
2- Base (S)
3- Latch (E)
4- Bottom VCM (H)
5- Media (Y)
6- Headstack (V)
7- Actuator-Preamp (2)
8- Top VCM (A)
9- Separator (H)

Wouldn't things like the Preamp also need to be the same too?

The above table is saying only the Media and Headstack need to be identical.

What do you think?

Only the V2 needs to match in that DCM code. Your best bet is likely to get a 2Tb version (e.g. WD2002FAEX) which will likely have all heads, maybe even a few extra you don't need.

But, you need to determine the family and that is in the part of the model that's after the hyphen.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

Sorry when you say "V2" do you mean only the sixth letter in the DCM code (6- Headstack (V)) needs to be the same?

The length of DCM can vary on newer WDs. So it's not consistantly 6th, 7th whatever. It's always either T2, TJ, V2, VJ. That's what needs to match. Just look for the 2 or J and match that as well as the character just before it. Forget about which number digit it is, that's irrelavent.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company