WD3000 - seeking repair advice

[Rev Engineer]

One of my WD3000 drives recently failed. It spins up, clicks twice, spins back down, and gives up after a few attempts. From what I've read on this forum, it seems to be a somewhat common failure. No signs of burnt components on the PCB, but I noted that the Smooth IC was getting very hot during the power-up attempts. For $8 USD, I sourced a new Smooth IC from softcom.com and replaced it. No success and the drive behaves the same. As another attempt, I got a hold of a WD3200-00KFA0 which has the same PCB number (2060-701314-002) and swapped PCB's along with U12. Still no success and I'm guessing this is now likely a head and/or preamp failure? I'm at a crossroads as to whether I should spend more time with it. My WD3200-00KFA0 drive might be a suitable head donor for the failed (WD3000-00KFA0), but from what I've read on this forum, I probably won't have any success since I have no experience swapping heads or platters.

The data on the failed drive is not ultra-critical. Its value to me is probably around 100 bucks - certainly too little to pay a professional company to get the data off my drive. So, do I keep experimenting and possibly try a head swap since I have nothing to loose - it could be a neat learning experience even though I have very low chance of success? Or should I stop wasting my time and toss the dead drive in the trash? Any other options?

Thanks for the wealth of information. It has helped me make some fair attempts at repairing my drive.

[rchadwick]

Does the Smooth chip still get hot?

Are you sure it spins up? Does it spin up normally, or take an unusual amount of time?

[jono-ats]

It's normal for the Smooth IC to get hot with spin-up attempts. It has to deliver enough energy to the motor for start-up torque.

If you've replaced the PCB and ROM its pretty likely that you have one or more bad heads. It may be possible to read around a bad head, but only if you have the correct (and expensive) gear.

Jon

[BlackST]

Bad head. And good luck as the drive is wd for head swap... Awful.

[thatdellguy]

Trash it and get a backup plan...

[Rev Engineer]

The drive does spin up normally. If I place my thumb over the chip, after the 4th-5th spin-up attempt, I have to remove my thumb to avoid burning myself. I can see how this could be normal for start-up conditions.

Looks like I take the advice from the group and toss the brick.

I do have a backup plan in place for all of my critical data. The data on this drive fell into a gray area and wasn't apart of my backups.

[Rev Engineer]

Before trashing it, I opened it up and could see that one of the heads on the inner platter had flipped back and was essentially sitting vertical to the platter. Assuming that a head swap was feasible, would the flipped head likely have damaged the entire platter surface?

Has anyone seen this type of failure before?

[BlackST]

Scratched platter=lost forever that area