I was wondering if someone could give me a pointer as to what the problem might be here - I have an inkling the u2 might be damaged, but don't know. It's on a WD1600 (Caviar SE).

At first the 160GB disk board had been blown up in what seems to be the usual way by a power surge (which also blew the psu). Swapped the PCB from a donor, got the 8GB hawk in bios. Proceeded to swap the U12. The first time I booted it, it was recognised correctly as 160GB and I got as far as seeing the directories on the disk, so it was mounted. I couldn't see any files when I tried to copy some off though. So tried rebooting (bad idea).

Since I rebooted and ever since, the drive will get recognised by the BIOS, but it won't mount. In linux, this looks like:

res 51/04:08:00:00:00.00:00:00:00:00/f0 Emask 0x1 (device error)
ata3.01 status: { DRDY ERR }
ata3.01 error: {ABRT }
ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133
ata3.01: configured for UDMA/133
ata3: EH complete
ata3.01: exception Emas 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
ata3.01: BMDMA stat 0x65
ata3.01: cmd c8/00:08:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/f0 tag 0 dma 4096 in

(don't know if anyone can decipher that)

So I guess my questions are:

Has anyone seen this before, is it likely to be a knackered U12, even though it is still detected correctly by the bios? (is it a case of 'if it's dead it's dead', or can it be partially dead?)

How easy is it to find a donor board with the correct U12 info from another disk (unlikely I guess, but what needs to match? I've tried 2 or 3 with no success.)

Thanks if anyone can provide any pointers. The data isn't really important enough to go for a pro option, but it would be nice to tinker enough to get it off. Thanks.

Whoops, I mean U12, not talking about a band

In fact there's another problem elsewhere. Turn on PC3k...

Hmmmm, I don't have access to any of that kit. Unless anyone has any other ideas, I guess it's game over for this one

Post on WD FORUM and ask if someone will give the info you need without tools assuming you can interact with internal fw. - not likely...
Option "b" : ask for pro intervention, that should be in the low end of price table.

Is it possible to find a donor that works without a u12 swap if I try enough? I can probably get hold of quite a few of them. What are the odds?

That won't work and / or corrupt ROM or SA (more rare but happens).

Fair enough - just thought I'd seen people in this forum before say they've occasionally managed to swap a board without needing to swap the u12?

Fair? You still have to get data...

Sorry, not sure I understand - you are saying there is still a possibility for me to get the data alone or not?

When I use mhdd I just get !!!!!!! (abrt errors) for every sector of the disk. I guess this means a probable corrupt SA? The thing that puzzles me is that it worked the first time I booted it after transplanting the U12. Is it possible that the PCB from a different disk has corrupted the SA? Why would it work once then never again? Strange.

I vote for SA mod damage on this one. You need PC3K to fix this one. You can not do anymore now on your own. Sorry.

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Iorana Haraharaini