Some Interesting Thoughts About Western Digital Drives....

Ok...first of all please don't flame me as I am only trying to offer some possible useful information to this board. Additionally, I am NOT an expert. So here goes....

I have spent many years in electronic manufacturing and it has taught me the overall it's important to keep production costs as low as possible. That being said, it would make sense to me that Western Digital does not really have many variations in their hard drive PCB's. Think about it for a moment, ever notice how their PCB's use the same part number for many different drives?

For example....

The drive I am attempting to recover is as follows:

WD800BB-22JHC0
DCM# ESBANTJAA

So it may make sense that only a small subset of the above part/product numbers are significant. I phoned Western Digital and hounded them for several days and I could only get them to confirm this, but they would/could not offer any additional information as to decipher these numbers.

I am also sure that the above numbers could be broken down to signify different parameters. Information such as plant number, production run, etc. - this information may not be relevant to finding a matching PCB to recover a failed drive.

That being said, does anyone have any information about Western Digital naming or numbering conventions? I am sure that it's out there.

Again, I don't claim to be an expert....just trying to find a logical solution to PCB matching issues.

Just my $.02