preamp question for the Gurus

[quasimodo]

Hey all together again,

As usuall I need some assistance

I have WD1600JD drive and It got hit by lightning. I Think both PCB and Preamp are shot.
I have a PCB donor, but I don't have an exact donor for the Head Stack Assembly.

So Here to my question:
Does the matching of the preamp follow the same criteria as matching the Head Stack Assembly, or is the HD more relaxed as to the preamp doner criteria?

Thanks as always

[harddrivespecialist]

You have to replace headstack, because you won't be able to just change a preamp.

[quasimodo]

Thanks for the reply.

Why not?

[harddrivespecialist]

Because preamp it on a head stack.

[quasimodo]

You remove Head stack from drive, then use Rework station to remove preamp.
take donor preamp and solder on HSA, then move HSA back to the drive.

I don't see any problem.

[quasimodo]

Sure, there are easier things in life then removing that tiny preamp, but it's certainly not impossible.

[harddrivespecialist]

Why you would you do that?
You still have to match a preamp to those heads.

[quasimodo]

So Here to my question:
Does the matching of the preamp follow the same criteria as matching the Head Stack Assembly, or is the HD more relaxed as to the preamp donor criteria?

Please read the question correctly,

Thank you.

[TerraNova]

As far as i know high capacity WD hard drives very relaxed in terms of DCM selection as long as you follow the DCM selection criteria.

[ragadatasolutions]

Hi Quasimodo,

Get a donor WD Disk matching the first three letters of the patient disk's DCM.
The Preamps are always compatible with its own Headstack.
Replace the Headstack without swapping the Preamp.

It will definitely make you Smile like this:



-RDS.

[N.C.]

Hi Quasimodo,

Get a donor WD Disk matching the first three letters of the patient disk's DCM.
The Preamps are always compatible with its own Headstack.
Replace the Headstack without swapping the Preamp.

It will definitely make you Smile like this:



-RDS.

Hi,

Yes, the preamp is always compatible, with the heads on the headstack, but different manufacturer of the head/preamp needs different configuration in the fw.
If somebody doen't care about this on other drives, easily can make some strange-clicking, slow reading, bad sector-looking drive, or can destroy the data during the automatic reallocation process....
On wd, you can made one artifical error, and useless the head alignment attempt.

The DCM shows the head/preamp/platter manufacturer, we need to care about it!

Based on my experience, if we have not the matching headstack, the different head manufacturer can be big problem, but different preamp manufacturer sometimes works.

Regards,
Janos

[quasimodo]

Great information guys!!!

Thank you all so much for the replies

[pninja]

Hi Quasimodo,

Get a donor WD Disk matching the first three letters of the patient disk's DCM.
The Preamps are always compatible with its own Headstack.
Replace the Headstack without swapping the Preamp.

It will definitely make you Smile like this:



-RDS.

hi,

Isn't it the last three letters

Regards