My WD2500 drive crashed. When its plugged in the computer will not boot. The platters do spin if I hold the drive (out of, and unconnected from the computer) up to my ear and twist it. So I assume this is a PCB board failure. I found on Ebay a WD1200 drive with the same PCB and same model numbers (except its a 1200 instead of 2500).

I have called around asking ppl if they can swap out the FW chip and no one seems will attempt to do this. They also tell me that it is not likely the PCB...

Anyone have any suggestions on how I can get this FW chip swapped out?

No need to take it off; it can be reprogrammed with the proper tools.
But to my knowledge there is no software-only solution.
I'm afraid you have to go to a professional.

Regards,

Dobre

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When powering on the computer - does the drive spin up?

I don't know if it spins up.... I can feel heat though.

Starling... You seem to know a lot about WD's and I have read somewhere that the difference between a WD2500 and WD1200 for a PCB swap will not make a difference. Is this the case? If not should I be attempting to swap the 8 legged FW (I pretty sure its the FW chip) chip or something else?

That's very important - you have to know if the drive spins up or not.
Just take the drive to your ear and power on the computer. If you hear the platters spinning then most likely it's not a PCB problem. If it's totally silent then you have to swap the ROM chip. Size of the donor doesn't matter. Just make sure number etched on the PCB(2060-001292-003 for example) is the same or differs only in the last character.

I hooked up the drive. I hear what I think are the platters spinning and a couple of normal clicks (or something like the head seeking?) But I still can not access the drive

When I have only this drive (on C/S, not master) hooked up to the system before windows loads the computers says:

Pri Master Hard Disk: S.M.A.R.T. command failed

When I have only this drive (on master) hooked up to the system before windows loads the computers says:

Reboot and select proper boot device or Insert boot media in selected boot device

When I have the main drive and then this drive (C/S) hooked up to the MASTER plug of the IDE cables of the DVD/CD before windows starts I get

Fixed disk 0 Maxtor (Ultra DMA mode ATA/100)
Fixed disk 1 WDC2500JB 00FUAO (Ultra DMA mode ATA/100)er Utility mode S.M.A.R.T. command failed

When I have the main drive and then this drive (C/S & slave) hooked up to the SLAVE plug of the IDE cables of the DVD/CD windows does boot up, but the drive is not recognized when I look for it in the device manager.

Any Ideas on what the problem is? Would a hot swap work with the WD1200 here?

Thanks for your help.

If the drive is being picked up correctly, like it seems, then your PCB is OK.

Looks like either a translator problem, or bad sectors.

Try hooking the drive up with another drive and using a DOS (or Linux) based imager to image the drive. E.g. media tools, dd_rescue, CopyR etc.

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I found out that a SMART failure (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) means this drive is dead or dying.

Anyone have any ideas on what I should do to attempt to rescue the data?

It's not dead, but dying

Image it quick, before it does die.

DO NOT let windows at it any more.

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OK i will try to image the drive using copyr.

Question. Should I disable the SMART feature in my BIOS?

and would SpinRite be a good program for this job?

Hmmm. I can't find a copy of Copyr and I found out it only works with HD's up to 125 gig... I have 250 gig.

Media tools is expensive and dd_rescue is a linux program and I have never used linux before. Does anyone know of any other DOS imagers that will work for me?

Disabling SMART only disables showing SMART warnings or failures (AFAIK)

Personally, I don't trust Spinrite. If it makes images, I suppose it will be OK.

If the drive isn't too bad, Norton Ghost should do it. You can also check out a number of free imaging tools on http://www.ubcd4win.com. I used to fix computers for a living, and relied on it heavily.

If the drive is really bad, you will encounter bad sectors that lock up the drive. You may have success by skipping the bad sectors, or imaging the drive backwards (If your tool allows it), or copy off just the files you need. If there's a lot of them, you may need better (And more expensive) tools. The commercial version of Copyr (HD Duplicator) looks good, but around $500. As far as I know, it's the cheapest imager that will power cycle the drive.

Isn't Norton Ghost a windows app?

What do you guys think of Diskpatch, or Stellar Phoenix? would these programs do DOS (non-windows) level cloning?

I think I my try to the DD_rescue tomorrow evening if I don't come up with something better.

Most of the real work in Ghost is done by a DOS app, bootable from a disk or bootable CD (At least on older versions, newer versions are junk IMO). You can also use the windows version on another computer. I also forgot to mention http://www.ubcd.com, which is a DOS version of http://www.ubcd4win.com. I've modified both by adding my tools, and it's very helpful for cloning. If you don't want to spend money, I'd recommend one of those. Diskpatch looks good too, but it's $50.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ is the correct link.

Thanks for the help. I will check this out.

Oops!. Thanks