Could This Be a PCB Issue? Heat Related Failure?

[gibson]

I'm working in a computer that I believe likely had an initial issue of crashing due to the graphics card and/or CPU overheating. The machine was clogged with dust and the fan intakes on the GPU in particular were clogged solidly. Symptoms prior to crashing were fans running on high constantly.

There were 4 drives in the computer - 2 SSD, 2 conventional.

After cleaning the computer throughly and getting it running again, the 2 conventional drives won't mount. They both have identical symptoms. They will spin up, they sound fairly normal in that there is no loud clicking or scraping, and they show up in the hard drive utility program but come up as needing initialization. (This is an older model Mac Pro computer).

When connected to a PC via a USB dock, the drives are not recognized at all in the disk management program nor seen in BIOS. When inserted in the dock, the drive spins up, you hear some brief initial engagement, windows makes an audible alert like the drive is mounting, then spinning slows for a moment and the process starts back over again. After about 4-5 loops like this the drive goes to sleep.

I am wondering if could be a PCB issue?

These are Western Digital WD5000AAKS Black drives.

The SSDs are working just fine.

Thanks,
greg

Last edited by gibson on January 25th, 2017, 13:25, edited 1 time in total.

[data-medics]

Let's start with the most basic of information, such as what model hard drives they are.

[gibson]

Let's start with the most basic of information, such as what model hard drives they are.

Yes sorry, I was just adding that when your message posted.

Western Digital WD5000AAKS Black.

greg

[gibson]

Here is a picture of each board. Both boards seem to have discoloration in the upper left corner on the contacts.

[fzabkar]

Gently clean the contacts with a soft pencil eraser.

Oxidisation on Western Digital PCBs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php? ... 649&p=1789

[gibson]

Gently clean the contacts with a soft pencil eraser.

Oxidisation on Western Digital PCBs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php? ... 649&p=1789

Contacts fairly shiny now but no luck accessing either drive.

Spins up, initial engagement, can hear driving searching but no loud or unusual clicks/scrapes, slows momentarily and process repeats over and over again.

Both will eventually show up in Mac Disk Utility as Ext Hard Disk Media (connected via USB dock). It shows the correct capacity. It shows an unmounted volume labeled Untitled with the correct capacity but with zero KB available.

greg

[gibson]

BTW, for further clarity and if it makes a difference.

One drive is WD5000AAKS-00YGA0

One is WD5000AAKS-65YGA0

[fzabkar]

The 88i6745-TFJ1 MCU is known to develop "head mimic" faults. You could try a PCB swap, but you will need to transfer the patient's embedded ROM code to your donor PCB.

See viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34432&start=20

I would first try to read the drive's ROM and SA modules using HDDSuperTool.

[rogfanther]

How were these drives configured in the original machine ? Some kind of hardware/software raid ?

[gibson]

How were these drives configured in the original machine ? Some kind of hardware/software raid ?

No Raid. Just individually. That's why it's odd they would both fail in the same manner.

[gibson]

The 88i6745-TFJ1 MCU is known to develop "head mimic" faults. You could try a PCB swap, but you will need to transfer the patient's embedded ROM code to your donor PCB.

See viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34432&start=20

I would first try to read the drive's ROM and SA modules using HDDSuperTool.

Looks like HDDSuperTool is Linux only? Don't have that luxury at the moment.

[gibson]

I would :

- Plug the drives directly by SATA and forget about USB.

- Run WDMarvel and see if it detectd the drive in PIO mode (IDE COMPATIBLE), you might need to change the SATA port setiings on BIOS to IDE compatible mode as well.

- If WDMarvel detects the drive with correct capacity and model try to read SA modules as well. If the drive spins up and down and it's not detected on WDMarvel please do let us know. Also try WDMarvel with a good drive so that you are sure that you have the correct port selected and that the tool is working as expected on your system.

- If the drives died at the same time it's way mre likely that they had suffer from some sort of power surge from the PSU killing the pre-amp rather then the 2 of them having PCB defect/heads mimic at the exact same time. Same goes for firmware damage. I don't think that you were so unlucky to have 2 drives suffering from damaged Firmware at the exact same time....

I'll download WDMarvel and give this a go.

I assume that dead pre-amps are not a good thing.

Thanks for your response.

greg

[gibson]

I would :

- Run WDMarvel and see if it detectd the drive in PIO mode (IDE COMPATIBLE), you might need to change the SATA port setiings on BIOS to IDE compatible mode as well.

Doesn't look like my mobo supports IDE. SATA mode options are ACHI and Intel RAID only. AMI Bios on Asus Maximus IX mobo.

To access IDE Mode in WDMarvel, you use the drop down above master/slave, correct? If I change that setting to IDE Compatible it shows me 2 Intel A282 devices which I assume are SATA controllers? In Windows API mode the drive is not listed.