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.

_________________
http://www.pclab.com.pt facebook.com/PCLAB.A.T
ACELab partner

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)

_________________
SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

Try percussive maintenance.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

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 ,

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

@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.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

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:)