WD10EADS: Mighty power surge - photos of a 'smoked' platter

[cheadledatarecovery]

The order of how this failed was:
Suspected bad sectors -> accidental reinstall of OS over data by customer -> incorrect power adapter (voltage too high) by customer -> PCB failure -> checked for pre-amp failure, confirmed -> Then I opened the HDD to see this.

Most impressive power surge I've seen - melted plastic inside the HDA. The PCB itself was barely marked with just a tiny burn mark on the main processor.

[Dmitri]

incorrect power adapter ... by customer

Yes, they always call it this way.

Attachments

Power surge data recovery

[labtech]

Good one. wth

[michael chiklis]

Maybe customer tried DIY fix by inserting the drive in the oven (or with hot air gun).
Is it possible?

[cheadledatarecovery]

The HDD was originally in his desktop computer. After the accidental "return to factory defaults" he told me that he removed the HDD and put it into a standard 3.5" HDD caddy. I can only guess what power adapter he used or what happened next. The customer was open about the sequence of events and I did quiz him in detail about how failure had happened and what attempts he had made - there were no DIY attempts on this HDD.

Interestingly the main PCB itself barely had a mark on it. Usually the HDDs received in which have had a failure of the pre-amp also have a badly burnt out motor controller chip.