WD2500KS - need new board and some advice!

[prot]

The drive:
Western Digital WD2500KS-00MJBO 250GB SATA

Label: 2061-701335-C00 AG
Board: 2060-701335-005 Rev A

So I had 2 of these drives working in Raid0 for a few years now. Yesterday, one of them stopped working - it would not even spin up. I found this forum, did some searching, and as an experiment I took the PCB off the working drive, put it on the dead one, and was excited to hear it spin up! Unfortunately, I have no idea if the data is accessible, sine I need both drives to be striped in Raid0 to recover the data.

My questions:
1. Am I on the right track? Looks like I will need a new PCB, right?
2. Where can I get the new PCB?
3. Should I be matching the PCB using the code on the label or on the board itself?
4. Will I need to do a U12 swap? From reading the forum, it looks like it's needed most of the time, unless I get really lucky with an identical board. Sadly I have 0 soldering skills (I'm a software guy ), but I do have some engineer friends...


Thanks a lot, I appreciate any help!

[roudesign]

Hi, few days ago I had a similar problem, I was almost clueless about the PCB swap on the new big capacity drives, but and with help and a lot of luck I was able to find a way of recovery my data. this was my problem pcb-repair-replaced-help-needed-for-two-book-t16214.html

In my case the problem was with the TVS diode, so I was lucky to have the problem only with the diode.a simple test I did was actually to desolder one end of the diode D4 , isolate the open end , an try to see if HDD spins, if yes , maybe you have a chance.If not, measure the other diode D3, and the 0 ohm resistor (closest part to D4)

My answers to your questions, again.
1. New PCB, or try to fix yours, but the HDD preamp can be damaged to, so, take the PBC problem with a grain of salt
2. You get a look online, ebay, or send a request on the HDD repair forums (there are plenty), but the chances to find the exact model/sn/firmware PCB, are very slim
3. matching the PCB using the code on the label (firmware)
4. U12 swap? Risky, I do not recommend to mess with swapping chips, It can cost a lot down the road.
Again I'm not a specialist in HDD repairs, and as others said to me , the safest way is to take it to professionals, but....this is a repair forum so you have to make the decisions yourself.

[Cleanroom]

with the good board on the bad drive, clone it to another drive of equal or larger size. Once completed put the good drive back together and hook them back up as if they were before the failure and it should identify the raid again. Pending you did not mess with the data on the other drive

[prot]

Thanks for the replies!

with the good board on the bad drive, clone it to another drive of equal or larger size. Once completed put the good drive back together and hook them back up as if they were before the failure and it should identify the raid again. Pending you did not mess with the data on the other drive

Hey, this occurred to me, but I wasn't sure that it was possible to do raid0 with totally different drive. It definitely sounds like the most low-cost, low-risk solution, since I do have a spare 500GB Seagate drive lying around. Do you have any suggestions for a cloning utility?

As for testing the diodes, it sounds like a good option to explore - I will borrow a meter from a friend. I read your success story - congratulations! One clarification - I don't need to desolder the diode to check that it's shorted, correct?

Thanks!

[fzabkar]

I don't need to desolder the diode to check that it's shorted, correct?

No, but in the extremely unlikely case that the short persists on the PCB after removing the diode, you will need to search for other culprits.

[prot]

Seems the diodes (I checked D3 and D4) are conducting fine, as is C68 (the closest part to D4, as roudesign mentioned. Next I will try to use the PCB from the working drive to get the drive to work, clone it to a different drive and try to load the raid set...

[prot]

Update - I tried to hook up the RAID with the swapped PCB, but ran into a couple problems.

1. The bad drive with the good PCB does spin up, but is not recognized by the system. One diagnostic tool showed its info as model: WDC ROM MODEL - HAWK, and showed capacity as a 8.01GB instead of the 250GB. Needless to say it couldn't see any partitions or data from it.

Do you guys think this is because I didn't do the U12 swap? Or is this a symptom of something else going on?

2. Cloning the good drive to another good drive so that I could take the good PCB off didn't work. The copying completed, the partitions look the same, but the target drive is not being recognized as having a RAID structure, even though I did a bit-by-bit copy. I was using the CopyWipe utility, which is on the Ultimate Boot CD that I'm booting from. I'll try using some other clone tools on there...

[sinusoidal]

The 'wdc hawk' will be because of not swapping the u12, yes.