Western Digital HD barely alive

[Seanfox]

I recently discovered my 1.0 TB hard drive (model WD10EZRX) wasn't spinning up. After doing some troubleshooting I confirmed the drive was getting power but not coming on. I have a second identical hard drive, so i transferred the bios chip (U12) from the bad board to the donor board, then attached it to the troubled hard drive. The drive then came to life and spun up however it cannot be read by windows (including disk management). The bios however does see the drive. The drive itself spins up, makes a few clicking sounds (not destructive sounding) and shuts down until its pinged again during reboot, etc.

I tried running Spinrite software however it errors out. Attached is some pictures of the errors. I am at a loss on what to do next. I need the data off this drive so the solution needs to take this into consideration. Thanks

Attachments

[labtech]

Send to data recovery professional is likely the best course of action.

[fzabkar]

Can you upload a photo of the faulty PCB?

Can you measure the resistances of the two TVS diodes (D4 and D3)? If the drive suffered an overvoltage on the 5V supply, then this may have damaged the preamp.

[Seanfox]

Picture attached. Ohm values on the image, i measured both polarities which is why there are 2 values.

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[fzabkar]

How exactly does the drive appear in BIOS? Model number? Capacity?

When you say "shuts down", do you mean "spins down" or do you mean that the drive stops responding?

The TVS diodes appear to be OK, so it appears there was no overvoltage.

If you can provide detailed photos of your patient and donor PCBs (particularly around the motor controller and HDA contacts), I can help you measure the voltage test points. That might give us a clue as to the reason for the failure.

BTW, SpinRite will only thrash your drive. It will recover nothing.

[fzabkar]

Here is a thread which has your voltage test points (see page 2):
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32303

[Seanfox]

ok sorry it took so long to get back to you. To answer the previous questions.

How exactly does the drive appear in BIOS? Model number? Capacity?
When you say "shuts down", do you mean "spins down" or do you mean that the drive stops responding?

See attached screen shot, the drive is recognized but as you can see it only knows the model info, nothing more
"Shuts Down" = spins down

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Bios Screen

Bios Screen

Back side

Board on the left is the "dead" board. The right one is the donor.

[fzabkar]

If you short test points TV9 and TV10 with tweezers, does the HDD still appear in BIOS with its correct model number? You only need to apply the short before applying power to the drive and until it stops clicking or spins down.

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TV9_TV10.jpg (62.23 KiB) Viewed 9739 times