Wow great info sharing in here!!!

So I have a drive from a family member that contains a bunch of pictures which of course she didn't back up. I said I would see what I can do as I went to school for electronics and have worked in IT and ITSEC for years. HA! This hard drive recorvery detailed work makes me feel like an idiot so I give it up to you guys.

So here goes. It is a WD3200BEKT and I found a similar one off ebay. The MDL:, PCB first 2 sets of numbers, DCM (except 2nd character), and P/N match exactly. We will call family member one drive A and ebay one drive B.

A drive with A PCB - Drive spins up, sounds like heads are moving freely, but computer never sees the drive in computer manager. After 60-120 seconds a loud click happens, the drive stops spinning and now the computer sees the drive as a USB drive (not typical WD blah blah) but I can not access any data because the drive isn't spinning.
B drive with B PCB - Works perfect
A drive with B PCB - Same issue as A drive with A PCB
B drive with A PCB - Works perfect

So it is obviously a internal drive issue but would would make it spin and then stop after so long with a loud click and the the computer sees something just not the drive itself?

I suppose you're connecting the drives via USB, via the same USB bridge, right?
Then you ruled out the usb enclosure/case as the culprit. You also ruled out the pcb (pcb swap worked without rom adaptation?).
So



Now it's game over for DIY and if the data is important, it's pro time.

Good luck!

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners