Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
February 2nd, 2009, 0:57
Customer states he accidentally plugged the drive into a notebook charger, 19V model for a HP POS.
Drive PCB had been shorted on the 12V side previously, but I can't find anything wrong with the PCB on it after replacing the two burned TVS diodes.
Motor spins up, clicks several times, spins back down, and identifies as 2TB. Having difficulty with diagnostic mode. Last WD I saw with this issue had a damaged preamp.
I don't know WD drives well, so I don't know what resistances to look for where. Suggestions?
February 2nd, 2009, 1:10
most likely damaged preamp.
February 2nd, 2009, 1:50
Fried preamp. Ouch!
About 2000 €/$ for complete recovery, or forget data and live without it.
February 2nd, 2009, 2:02
BlackST wrote:Fried preamp. Ouch!
About 2000 €/$ for complete recovery, or forget data and live without it.

BlackST aka BlackNasty
February 2nd, 2009, 2:15
BlackST wrote: forget data and live without it.
(c) BlackST 2009
February 2nd, 2009, 13:18
That's what I was thinking. To the garbage it is. Belongs there anyway.
February 2nd, 2009, 13:53
No Martini no party, no money no data...
February 2nd, 2009, 20:28
BlackST wrote:No Martini no party, no money no data...
Is that a new one BlackST?
February 3rd, 2009, 3:14
Yes. (yesterday I saw an old ad....)
February 3rd, 2009, 5:58
I do also figure I would mention this.... I don't need to be told costs or things like that.
I know how to change the head assembly myself if I wanted to do so. I've done this many times and DO have an appropriately clean facility do do this, as well as the correct tools. I just haven't done many of these things in a good amount of time. I did this sort of thing from the days of the old ST225s when you actually could manually drive the head to whatever position you wanted it to be in and then and manually read the output from the MFM drives on a scope while adjusting the gain manually through external amplification, attenuation, and processing equipment. Remember doing that? It's fun, and feels a lot more hands on than these drives let you get.
I didn't touch anything modern from about 1995 to 2002, but then just worked on my own projects and some things for a company I was working for at the time. I had to re-learn a lot afterward, but most things stayed a lot the same. I really just had to learn to take my hands off the wheel a little more, as it may seem, and rely more on the drive's own electronics to do the work. I've handled internal repairs on over a dozen models of more modern (10GB-500GB) Quantum, Maxtor, Seagates with good results. I just haven't dealt with a modern WD and don't do this as a business anymore.
Either way, I was fairly certain I knew what the problem was from the start with this drive, but unfortunately, I do not have serious tools for WD diagnostics, and don't care enough about this drive to bother. Now all I have to do is decide if this WD paperweight and my inconvenience troubleshooting it is worth one of people's jobs for screwing it up.
February 3rd, 2009, 10:30
Zorb wrote:Either way, I was fairly certain I knew what the problem was from the start with this drive, but unfortunately, I do not have serious tools for WD diagnostics, and don't care enough about this drive to bother. Now all I have to do is decide if this WD paperweight and my inconvenience troubleshooting it is worth one of people's jobs for screwing it up.
Problem in modern WD will arise when you will remove top cover. Allignment is very nasty thing on WD's.
February 3rd, 2009, 23:08
^^ Not only that, I guess. there are more...........
February 4th, 2009, 4:44
Are they back to anchoring the pivot bearing at the top like the Protege/EB series? That's idiotic.
I've always hated Western Digital products. They seem to always have one really overwhelming idiotic spot. They had bands that broke on their later stepper motor drives, now rolling optimization and matching code stored in the processor, and I guess also now back to anchoring (instead of merely stabilizing) the pivot with the lid.
Stupid garbage drives.
Now I wonder why I went back to Hitachi since the Seagate 7200.11s came out. Make choice: Garbage or lesser garbage? Moo.
February 4th, 2009, 9:14
I still Like Seagate... it is an easy MONEY.
and Say no way for WDC.
Bye WD
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