Nevertheless I do not understand why when I swap the PCB of the faulty drive on the working drive (HDD1+PCB2 previous test) the drive have the same behavior as the
faulty PCB with the faulty HDD (HDD2+PCB2) the drive clic and stop,

If the PCB of the faulty drive was OK should the board swap also defeated the safety mechanism and let the drive spin cause none of both drives used for the test have mecanical problem, heads are ok ?

Personally I think you will be wasting your time and money, but you could always try reselling the tool.

You WILL be wasting your time.

I would be very interested to see if the original board still has the same symptom.

Congratulations, BTW.

I have noticed that after the PCB swap and the drive was able to spin without any click, but despite it was not recognized by windows it was in Bios.

With an Acronis usb boot stick (It was really long for the drive to be recongized but after an error message saying bad sector ...) I was finally able to see the drive and all the files on it. For information I haven't move the NVRAM only swap the boards but it worked it really surprise me because I have for an hitachi drive and a nvram swap was needed. In that case the pcb were very close (17 march and 16 march with similar info on the pcb stickers)

I have recovered all the files except 3 small files without interest (total = 980 Go) so ... finally I haven't waste my time the more painfull was to backup the drive by creating acronis tib files (I have created multiple separate backup files for security) and restore them on another drive.

Since my files have been recovered I will try to fix the drive with hiren boot cd tools to see if it is possible but I will not waste to much time the goal now is to do a secure erase of the drive, swap back with the wrong pcb and send it to western digital (warranty is still valid).

One more time thanks, I feel today really reassured and happy to have recovered my files

Diz

Hi all,

My external harddrive(ntfs, 2 TB, Western digital elements, WD20EARS) became corrupt after a not successful copying of files action in Linux-Backtrack operating system. During the copy action, the Linux OS hybernated automatically to the standby situation, which caused for the freezing of the copy action. After the freezing i tried to cancel the copy action, which failed, and crashed. I could not stop the crash, so i removed the usb cable of the harddrive. And after this the harddrive was not recognized anymore by several computers where i have tried to read it. I tried everything and nothing solved the problem.

After this i have opened the original casing of the external harddrive, and removed the internal sata harddrive. I have tried the read this internal sata harddrive with several computers, but did not succeed, getting error messages from bios like "Master Harddisk Error", meaning it didnt recognize it.

Then, i tried to read the sata harddrive with a docking station and another new usb casing. This time the computers did recognize it, but in disk management "Harddrive not initialized" error and reported that the harddrive is 0kb. Both with casing, dockingstation and internal sata, the harddrive makes a ticking sound, trying to read the harddrive for a long time, but failing each time. I have tried to read it with the Gparted Linux OS. Gparted was busy for hours to read the harddrive(in the docking station or casing), but failed finally with some I/O error popup.

When i went to a computer shop they said the harddrive was recognized as 2 TB(so not 0 KB) but it was impossible to reach the folders/files. They told me the problem could maybe be solved, when replacing the circuitboard. They also told that maybe the cache could have been damaged.

I can say that i have never dropped the harddrive or did not damage the hardware components of the harddrive, the problem did happen only because of a software error. So how can i solve this problem and save some of the files on the harddrive? Will replacing the circuit board solve the problem? I have heard of people with similar problems(with Seagate harddrives), who had solved it by updating the firmware of the harddrive(firmware only available at the office of Seagate support centre). I see you cannot download the firmware of Western Digital publically from their website, so should i call Western Digital support to ask for this firmware update? Will this fix the problem? Another thing i have not tried is a sata to usb adapter(not the same as usb dockingstation or casing). Will this make any difference?
Besides these options, what else can i try to successfully read my corrupt harddrive?