Hello mates, I have to try recovering data from a WD CAVIAR WD3000JB (Caviar SE) . The HDD was originally mounted in a box , the drive stopped working (surely heated a lot because of poor quality of ALL those china quality boxes) . Connecting the drive to IDE bus it's recognised with factory alias (WDC ROM MODEL-BUCCANER- 08.05J08) obviously the PC says "drive fails". The drive spin up, unpark heads, two knock, spin down, then repeat cycle for 30-60 secs. then stop.
First analyzed the PCB, there was a small hole on the Marvell chip (the drive is a RoHS with the new PCBs, Marvell 88i6540-LFH1) strange but true the failure of the chip does not prevent the drive from "start" , probably something at port level burned out. Before making attempts, need advice on swapping PCB. My idea was to get a similar PCB then desolder the serial PROM 25F1024 near the Marvell chip (hoping it's OK but the probability is high just because the drive starts and is identified with the factory alias) and swapping on the NEW pcb.
I have found another 3000JB (brand new), so let's compare:

Original :

MDL : WD3000JB-00KFA0
DATE 27 OCT 2006
DCM: HHBHCA2AAN

New :

MDL : WD3000JB-00KFA0
DATE 20 DEC 2006
DCM: DHBHCA2CHN

It's the closest I found, seems to be a very difficult part to find (here!).

Swapping the entire PCB produces the same result (spin up, 2 knock, spin down then give up after a while).

Questions before messing up... please help :

1) Do I have to swap the serial proms on the boards ?
2) According to YOUR experience, do the DCM sufficiently match ?
3) ... and also, may be a problem in the head stack at this point ?
4) Hot swap of the pcb's could give a chance ?

Any info. will be useful, I don't want to make "experiments" in order to maximise the chances to get the data back.
Many thanks and regards.

P.S. any suggestion for checking the preamp on these boards ?

1) Yes
2) No, not for PCB swap
3) Could be, if the drive still knocks after PCB (with ROM) swap. Also could be f/w module error
4) No

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Swapped the two PCBS and ROMs, still knocking two times then stop... at this point almost 90% if not 100% it's head problem.... last chance could be a defective 25F1024 serial prom chip but I think it's unlikely.
In case of defective serial prom, is the drive recognised (even with the factory alias ?) or what are the symptoms ?
Thanks for your attention and regards.

Hi, yes it's looking like heads. Sadly

If the ROM was bad, then the drive would not power up at all.

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