Quick question about Western Digital doner drive candidate

[Phredo]

Hey everyone!

I'm trying to find a donor drive to repair my damaged one. I've narrowed it down to the two closest I could find that matched model #, country of origin and was relatively close to the date of manufacture.

Of these two, one has a closer matching DCM and the other has a matching R/W and so my question would be, is there a better one to choose from? I found another two but they were made in Sep 2010 and so figured those were a little to far away from the date. My repair shop told me they should be as close to the manufacture date of the original drive as possible!

Specs of the damaged one:
MDL: WD5001AALS-00J7B0
DATE: 21 May 2010
DCM: HBRNNT2AB
DCX: 8003J7T75
R/N: 701567
Country of Origin: Malaysia

Donor 1
MDL: WD5001AALS-00J7B0
DATE: 28 March 2010
DCM: HARNNT2AB
DCX: 2009J6R72
R/N: 771591
Country of Origin: Malaysia

Donor 2
MDL: WD5001AALS-00J7B0
DATE: 29 March 2010
DCM: HBRNNT2CA
DCX: 4002J6R78
R/N: 701567
Country of Origin: Malaysia

Any and all help from the guru's would be hugely appreciated! Thanks in advance guys!

[pcimage]

What is actually wrong with the patient drive?

Who is doing the work?

[Phredo]

The drive suffered a small fall. Initial diagnostics from one place said:
* Damaged read/write head assembly. HA transplant is required.

* Possible damage of the drive’s firmware due to mechanical/electrical malfunction. Manual firmware reconstruction is required.

But their price was quite high (~$1400 CDN) so I was looking around for other options. Was looking at this place:
http://datainsight.ca/

Which offers a flat rate of $500 IF you can find a good donor, otherwise they find one for your at a cost of $300.

[Phredo]

My reply didn't seem to post so I'll try again.

The drive fell from a short distance. I brought it in for a quote from one place and they reported:
* Damaged read/write head assembly. HA transplant is required.
* Possible damage of the drive’s firmware due to mechanical/electrical malfunction. Manual firmware reconstruction is requi

Was looking at around $1500 CAD to get this done and so went for other options. Found another place that does this stuff for a $500 flat rate BUT could cost an extra $300 if they had to find a suitable donor drive hence why I was trying to find one for cheaper!

[Phredo]

Your .... repair shop ?

Is the drive clicking or making strange noises ?

Why did they ask you to find a donor drive to start with ? A proper data recovery firm would never ask the client to get the donor drive and the "repair shop" most likely doesn't have a hepa 100 clean room + experience to work on those drives, assuming the problem is indeed bad heads ...

Maybe the drive just needs something simple as a slow fix at the firmware level ?

Maybe the drive can still be imaged with hardware assisted tools ?


Regards and good luck.

Hehe ok for clarification I don't think repair shop was the proper term. IT IS an actual data recovery firm (http://datainsight.ca/) and seems to have a good reputation. They didn't ask me to get a donor drive, but rather told me they charge $300 for finding one and I was more than welcome to find one on my own accord which I'm doing now.

As for the patient drive, it's clicking and making all sorts of noises. BIOS doesn't see it. Tried a bunch of different tools to read it, no go. This isn't my area of expertise so there was only so much I could do!

I had brought it to another local data recovery place and they did an evaluation and found these issues:
* Damaged read/write head assembly. HA transplant is required.
* Possible damage of the drive’s firmware due to mechanical/electrical malfunction. Manual firmware reconstruction is required.

However they were looking to charge upwards of $1500 CAD for the work and so I was hoping to find a cheaper rate.

[drHDD]

Both donors are good for heads.