Need advice with a WD5000AAKS-00YGA0

[MacG467]

Hi everyone. I'm new (obviously).

I've recently encountered a situation with a WD5000AAKS that I purchased in December 2007. Yeah, it's right over the three year warranty replacement deadline.

Within the course of about a day, my drive went from readable to unreadable.

Here's what I've done to diagnose the problem:

1. I looked at the SMART data and it says the drive is at the end of it's service life and it has hit the threshold for sector reallocation.
2. I tried to use ddrecover to backup as much as I could...I got 300MB of data out of 360GB stored on the drive. It failed with an input/output error.
3. I listened carefully to the noise the drive makes. It spins up, is recognized by the BIOS, I can sometimes get into Windows and see the folders on the drive, but it makes two clicking noises, sits for a few minutes, makes two more clicking noises, sits for a few minutes, and does this until the drive makes the OS freeze, which is about ten minutes.
4. I removed the board to inspect for any components that gave up their ghost. Nothing did (I think) but I did notice that the foam padding has discoloration on the MCU contact area.

Now, here's my thoughts and tell me if I'm right or wrong.

• The PCB is most likely fine
• The SA is fine
• The preamp might be weak

Unless a majority of people think it's the PCB, I will not do a swap. And I know about the WDs having to move the ROM around, which I won't do anyway.

All I really need is an expert's opinion. Also, if someone can point me to an expert near Maryland, that would be great.

Also note that the data is highly confidential and whoever works on the drive will only be responsible for getting it into a working state for me to take the info off it myself onto a new drive.

And here's the model numbers for the drive and the PCB:
Drive: WD5000AAKS-00YGA0
PCB: 2061-701477-900 AB

[jono-ats]

Sounds like a failing head, although bad PCBs are pretty common, too.

We're WDC authorized, and work with this model regularly, if you want pro assistance.

[lcoughey]

I'm sorry to say that the majority of these drives have head and PCB issues. Either way, if your data is important, you might want to bite the bullet and have it properly diagnosed by an expert (jono) before it is too late.

[lcoughey]

I can't seem to see where I can delete my double post. Good luck!

Last edited by lcoughey on January 15th, 2011, 10:59, edited 1 time in total.