ADVICE? Dead WD5000AADS drive, have duplicate drive...

[ApexMicro]

A client's SATA hard drive crashed. The motor still runs, but the drive doesn't respond. So, in hope that it would be as simple as trading the drive's board, I purchased an identical SATA hard drive--same model anyway. I exchanged the boards...no dice. It didn't work. In fact, the computer recognizes the drive as 0 bytes.

Here's what I have:

ORIGINAL DRIVE
Western Digital WD5000AADS-00S9B0
DCM: HGRCHT2AHN
WWN: 50014EE1581BBC30
Date: 11 May 2010

DONOR/REPLACEMENT DRIVE
DCM: HGNCHT2AGN
WWN:50014EE101FE5E75
Western Digital WD5000AADS-00S9B0
Date: 08 Sep 2009

At this point I am stumped. If I could at least access the drive using the donor HD's board, then I could perhaps pull the raw data off the original drive. Being somewhat ignorant and hopeful, I thought trading the boards would work, then I thought perhaps it would be as easy as updating the firmware on the donor drive to match the original so it would work...and I discovered that's not so easy...

It used to be so much easier to get drives going by swapping boards.

So does anyone have any good suggestions? If not a way to get it going, any inexpensive places to get it fixed? Any of you have the tools to do it?

I noticed one guy on the forum suggesting that it was pointless to try to fix it without professional help in a similar case. That's not very helpful advice. These forums are supposed to help educate those that want to know how to repair hard drives, aren't they?

Thanks for any useful advice!

[sathyan]

A client's SATA hard drive crashed. The motor still runs, but the drive doesn't respond.

Any other symptoms , in bios etc

So, in hope that it would be as simple as trading the drive's board, I purchased an identical SATA hard drive--same model anyway. I exchanged the boards...no dice. It didn't work. In fact, the computer recognizes the drive as 0 bytes.

A straight swap will not work, you need to transfer the rom(unique for each drive) from the patient to the donor pcb.
you can find lot of information about how to indentfy the roms in this forum

I noticed one guy on the forum suggesting that it was pointless to try to fix it without professional help in a similar case. That's not very helpful advice. These forums are supposed to help educate those that want to know how to repair hard drives, aren't they?

Thanks for any useful advice!

That is because DIY is risky, and it is easy to spoil a recoverable drive and make it unrecoverable (or very costly to recover later )
If data is important, and as it is not your data, it is not advised to take DIY risk.

[BlackST]

Either all these threads are fake or people don't invest 5 minutes of their time googling something different from 'pcb'. Seems IMPOSSIBLE to me that for every given case the 1st thing to do is change a pcb.
Your drive may have a head or firmware problem that only a pro diagnose with pro equipment can tell, like it or not. Did you try on WD forum ?

[ApexMicro]

Any other symptoms , in bios etc

Completely undetectable. The only positive thing is the motor powers up.

I was scanning the drive for malware--which it did have--then powered down and came back to it a day later and there was no response. It must've been in the process of failing, though it wasn't obvious at the time.

A straight swap will not work, you need to transfer the rom(unique for each drive) from the patient to the donor pcb.
you can find lot of information about how to indentfy the roms in this forum

I figured as much. So, do you think it would be possible to use the donor drive's PCB, but replace the ROM? Is it likely the old ROM is still intact? I'm competent at soldering/desoldering, if that could work.

I noticed one guy on the forum suggesting that it was pointless to try to fix it without professional help in a similar case. That's not very helpful advice. These forums are supposed to help educate those that want to know how to repair hard drives, aren't they?

That is because DIY is risky, and it is easy to spoil a recoverable drive and make it unrecoverable (or very costly to recover later )
If data is important, and as it is not your data, it is not advised to take DIY risk.

Understood. I try to exercise great care when doing this kind of thing. If it appears that there is absolutely no way to fix it given the tools I currently have, then I'll look for an inexpensive professional--any suggestions are welcome.

However, if it's possible to simply swap the ROM, then I'd like to try that first. On the other hand, I don't want to brick TWO drives. Do ROMs usually blow when a PCB goes, or are they usually okay? Any thoughts?

[ApexMicro]

Either all these threads are fake or people don't invest 5 minutes of their time googling something different from 'pcb'. Seems IMPOSSIBLE to me that for every given case the 1st thing to do is change a pcb.
Your drive may have a head or firmware problem that only a pro diagnose with pro equipment can tell, like it or not. Did you try on WD forum ?

I've noticed that your comments are generally less than helpful. If you aren't here to help, then why bother? If you are, then please offer some useful advice, without the unnecessary sarcasm. Not everyone is an grand guru like you. Some of us would like to progress in our knowledge of how to repair hard drives. If you aren't offering anything useful, then please go bug someone else. If you are, then I'm willing to listen and learn.

You say that there may be an issue that only a pro can diagnose with "pro equipment". Okay. So you are saying that there is absolutely NOTHING that can be done without professional help? Then what the heck are these forums (or your advice) good for then? I suspect there are some relatively simple steps that people can take, and perhaps even intermediate steps that can be taken which might work.

Swapping a PCB is a reasonable thing to do for those of us that are ignorant. It works for practically every other type of electronics. You are saying that swapping a PCB NEVER works? Does it work SOME of the time? What percentage of the time would you think it works?

With the older IDE drives the PCBs could be swapped when the problem wasn't in the motor or the heads. I know that's possible because I've done it and I know plenty of others that have done it successfully, including "professionals". I haven't ever tried it with a SATA drive until now, however, it doesn't seem unlikely to work if everything else matches AND the heads and motors are working. It DIDN'T work, but that doesn't mean it was a particularly stupid thing to do. At best I have the old drive working and can extract the data before discarding it. At worst, I can just use the new drive and keep the old one for data restoration later. Am I wrong?

BlackST, no offense is intended, but you seem rather unhelpful and, forgive me, somewhat arrogant-sounding. Would you like to just push away newbies, maybe cow them enough that they never ask questions on this forum again? Or are you perhaps trying to keep newcomers out of the market so you won't have competition? That seems unlikely, because there is MORE than enough hard drive work to go around...

I'm curious how you learned the knowledge you have. Did you go look for it, and ask questions of experts until you had the knowledge you have today? Maybe you went to hard drive repair school (though I've never heard of one), or you worked for a major hard drive manufacturer. Or maybe you born with the knowledge? Whatever the case, don't you think it would be polite, nice, and kind to help other people with positive advice whenever possible, giving them the opportunity to learn?

I'm not asking that anyone teach me board-level repair or how to build a clean room and rebuild a drive. I'm just asking for any useful advice that anyone has to offer.

You should note that I also asked for suggestions of hard drive pros. I'm fully aware that there are repairs beyond my current expertise and equipment.

To answer your question, no I haven't tried the WD forum. Which WD forum, on the WD support site or a forum on this site? If the WD support site, I did look there, but this forum appeared to be more useful.

[Keatah]

"A client's SATA hard drive crashed. " Exactly what does this mean? Assuming the motor is spinning like you say, the next step is to determine if firmware on the platter is bad, or the PCB bad, or the heads and actuator are bad, among other things. You need the skills and knowledge to troubleshoot these areas.

You need to correctly diagnose the problem before repairing it. I would suggest you learn how a disk works. Learn it in enough detail till you acquire the knowledge needed to effect repairs. And there is a lot to know.

[Keatah]

@apexmicro - Roms can blow, PCB can blow, one can blow the other. It is important to gain the skills to use the tools to determine that. Sure, you can use a DMM and logic analyzer to test the ROM. You can also swap the ROM and see what happens. Several ways to approach it.

Disks are very complex multidisciplinary devices. You need to understand specifics as well as holistically, just what is going on in them. You need knowledge of procedures, theories, why things are done they way they are done.

If you don't have that then it is best to seek a professional that does have it. Or take the time to learn it.

[BlackST]

More or less what I said. Reality hurts .

[dick]

You need to go back and start with the simple diagnostics.

Use Mhdd or Victoria and check if drive is detcted, model number, firmware revision, lba, smart, and then surface media (just the first few sectors at the beginning then others at every 5% to 10% or so.

This is really easy stuff to do but try it out on a good working drive first! That way you can see the kind of results one should expect. Also then you can learn how to work with a sata drive using these programmes. All the info is here in the forums.

After performing these diagnostics on the original faulty drive report back with your findings. An experienced pro can then give you some usefull subjective advice rather than complete guesses.

[jono-ats]

As previously indicated, accurate diagnosis is essential to the data recovery process.

This particular drive family is DragFly1, which is a little harder than a number of other 500 GB families. PCB failure is unusual -- it's more likely a failing heads or firmware problem. But if I told you, for example, to check the Relo Block module, would you know what I was talking about, or even how to begin to find out?

It's not that pros are reluctant to share info --- quite a bit of that goes on, especially from one established firm to another. But trying to diagnose a drive remotely, that doesn't belong to you, and that requires a LOT of info and experience to recover, simply isn't practical, nor is it a good idea. Nothing personal, believe me. It's like asking your doctor how to do an appendectomy on your little brother, without an OR, tools, or knowledge. You are more likely to kill the patient than to be successful . . .

Now, if you want to tell your client that you have no idea what you are doing, and you still get their blessing, then you have mine as well.