Hey there guys. I'm in need of some help and hopefully I can find some. I'm looking to find a donor hard drive or maybe even just the controller board for a hard drive that died.

Western Digital

Model: WD5000AAKS - 00TMA0
Date : 31 DEC 2006
DCM : HBRCNV2CA
S/N : WMAPW1193222
WWWN : 50014EE000B8D84
Made in Malaysia

Someone pointed me in the direction of a few companies that might be able to help me but unfortunately, they weren't able to. I figure I need a PCB from a hard drive manufactured pretty close to the date of mine. So probably like +-3 months from December 2006? What do you guys think?

I tried doing a basic google search but you guys probably know of a lot more places that specialize in these kinds of services.

I'm pretty sure the mechanicals are all functioning properly and the board just burned out. The foam padding was a bit charred and the drive spins up fine.

I tried a board swap from a similar drive but it was from March 2008. Over a year difference so I don't think it was compatible. Drive was recognizable by the system at least. A little progress.

So if anyone knows of any sites, companies, or anybody that can help me, I'd appreciate it if you let me know.

Thanks!

BTW, I'm in the US.

How do you know that mechanicals are fine?

this usualy means that your board if fine and you have some other problem besides the board.

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I disagree. Today I've got a WD5000AAKS that "spins up fine" (that term doesn't tell us enough info, i.e. if it clicks, comes ready, etc.). In my case the drive stays BSY and won't come ready. Reprogramming a similar PCB solved the problem in this case.

Jon

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try to attach an audio recording of the disk "spinning up fine"

Well, let's put it this way. I know what a drive that doesn't spin up fine sounds like. I've got another drive that does that. I'm pretty sure it's the PCB because

I bought a similar hard drive hoping to use it as a donor. Everything seemed to be a good match except that the manufacture date was March 2008 compared to December 2006. So a little over a year apart. The PCB seemed identical. I can't say for the the firmware or any other slight differences.

The drive that I want to save, before, it wouldn't even be recognized. I use these drives in USB enclosures btw. Whenever I plugged in the drive, windows would freeze up until I unplugged it.

I swapped the PCB from the March 2008 drive and it spun up and windows didn't freeze. I ran some recovery utilities but found that they had trouble reading the drive. They KNEW the drive was there at least. A BIG step up from total death.

I ran testdisk to see if it could find anything recoverable. As it was scanning, I noticed that the drive parameters were off. The number of cylinders were incorrect and resulted in a drive which my system though was 4TB big.

I manually corrected the anomaly but it still wouldn't work. The scan would say 99%, 100%, 101% and keep going way past 100%.

I asked someone else on another forum and they said that the fact that the drive spins up and is able to recognized by the system is a good sign. Mechanicals SEEM fine.

However, they agreed that using a donor drive over a year old was a long shot. I figured it wouldn't hurt to try.

Now I figure if I can find a drive that's the same specs and within a few months of each other, I might have a pretty decent shot at recovering my data. At least that's what I'm hoping.

I'm always up for some more opinions, advice, suggestions on this matter. Also, help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

EDIT: The donor drive works fine by itself. It's perfectly good. If it is possible or something like that, would I be able to "reprogram" the donor PCB? I don't know anything about that because I'm learning as I go along.

I suppose a firmware update or something would be possible but the problem is, I have no idea of the original firmware or anything of that sort. Unless somebody has an identical drive and is willing to help me out? Firmware or other data programmed into the board?

Thanks.

Did you try that board on a good drive, how is that drive acts with that board?

Which tools are you using? PC3000, Salvation, ....?

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Post how the drive is identified in BIOS with both original and donor PCBs.

When I tried the old, bad pcb on the health drive, it spun up but did not work. It wasn't recognized in windows.

I don't know how it is identified in the BIOS. I use the drives with my notebook and they're in an external enclosure. I don't have a computer with a SATA connector to try to test it with. All I have is this notebook.

But back to the topic of this thread. I appreciate your help but what I'm really looking for is just to find a replacement PCB that will match up or is close enough to the old one.

Or if anyone knows if/how I can reprogram the healthy board so that it's compatible with the old drive, that'd be super awesome as well.

Hi, Magikalfly,

this question is not off-topic, so it is needless to get back to the original topic
Basically if u want to recover data, it is definitely advisable not to use external USB enclosures.
From what U already said I am about to think your drive's PCB is pretty fine, but the surface contains bad sectors, that's why Win is hanging when you plug it in.
With the donor PCB the drive probably aborts all access commands except ID due to FW incompatibility, so U can see the drive and WIn is not hanging, just won't show it in the disk management since it is unusable.
Remember this is just a theory based uppon what U said, but U might want to consider it.
To diagnose properly U definitely need to connect it to a real ATA/SATA port and check in LOW LEVEL tools (in DOS) like MHDD.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery