Hello,

I am experiencing an issue with an external hard drive, wd5000aaks. When hooked up over USB the drive begins to load but then I hear not necessarily clicking, but a noise as it were about to spin up and then immediately fails. This happens over and over for about 30 seconds and then stops. After it stops, if I go into drive management in Windows 7 it recognizes the disc but says that it has not been initialized. If I take the drive out of the case and connect it directly by a SATA cable the files show up but it brings the whole computer to a crawl and whenever I try to copy the files it eventually fails.

Any suggestions as to what might be the problem? I have an extra donor PCB board, but it's a 2060-701537-004 while the broken board is 2060-701537-003. I wasn't sure if trying a swap could cause additional damage so I haven't done anything yet.

Thanks in advance for any help!

When you connect the drive directly by SATA, you ear it start spinning? That what happens? Do you ear knocking noises? Spindle stops or continues rotating?

It makes the same noise when connected over SATA also. It does appear to continue spinning though.

Well, that may indicate different issues, like SA problems, ROM, Heads.
You need to take it to a pro for a proper diagnosis.

Its either a read/write head issue or a lot of bad sectors.

If your drive is still recognized by a computer, it should not cost you "an arm and a leg", may be one of those at worst.

Many forum members could offer inexpensive recovery, just let us know where you located and we'll refer you to a closest one.

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

That would be great. I am located near Atlanta, GA, USA.

Thanks!

Jono-ats, is one of very reputable members of this forum and located in Atlanta, GA.

http://www.datasaversllc.com

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com