WD - Heads or something else?

[vrocco]

I have a 500gb WD5000BMVV-11GNWS0. It is one of the drives with a native USB connection. Drive spins up when the USB is applied but the heads never move off the parking ramp. The drive eventually just spins back down. Not recognized by the OS or Atola Insight.

Is this a heads/translator issue? Or something else that can be fixed without a headswap? These drives seem to be fairly expensive on ebay to try and find a donor for heads, so I want to make sure I can't fix it some other way first.

I do have a compatible sata board on order for it. I want to see if I switch it to SATA if the Atola can recognize it.

Thanks for the help.

[data-medics]

If you're running the drive open, it might be that the airflow isn't reaching the right velocity to unlock the actuator (keeping the heads on the ramp). That or the drive is detecting a shorted head and shutting down before trying to initialize (though usually it wouldn't spin at all).

I'd try the PCB first just to rule it out, but it's a good chance that the heads are bad. 95% of Passports are bad heads.

[vrocco]

Thanks for the reply. I figured heads too, just didn't want to spend $200 on a donor drive if I didn't have to.