Hi,

I am new to the forum. However, I am a mechanical engineer, and I have some understanding of electronics.

I have a Western Digital WD5000AAKS

Can anyone help? Heres what happend?

1. I did notice a sound, which I thought was my CD drive whiring or clicking. Like a spin up, and then spin up again etc

2. I noticed that my some of my drives had dissapeared (like E, F, G, H) as I have other drives on the computer, and this is a storage. Not my boot drive.

3. I tried re-connecting the cables, and changing them. Did not correct the problem. Although it did 'spin-up'. I checked with a partition manager, and the whole drive did not turn up. So there is no discovery of the drive, never mind the partitions!

4. I took an external USA caddy that takes SATA drives. And I connected this drive up using this and the caddy.
- It first spins up. Then seeks a bit (like a second). Then it just spins for about 30 seconds, without actually doing anything. Then it seeks again briefly. Then just back to spinning again for 30-60 seconds or so. Then it spins down.

5. I then visually inspected the PCB. There are no hot areas to the touch.

6. I then removed the PCB carefully. There are no burn marks, and the foam that the PCB rests on has no evidence of burning or overheating.

I hope that I have described the symptoms well. But I do not know what this indicates, or indeed, if there is a cure, or a way to recover data.

Please can anyone work this through with me?

Kind regards, Bid

record the sound the drive makes during spin up. With a certain degree of accuracy it we can determine if its heads or a PCB issue.

sound most of the time related to heads

by leaving it like that you are killing the heads (most probably) it might be reading now or slowly will become blind
Pro. help is req. if your data are important.

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99% certain to be bad heads.

No DIY I'm afraid

We can almost certainly help with this, but these drives aren't cheap to recover.

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PC Image Data Recovery
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See wd5000aaks-00tma0-damaged-t19077.html

In that case the problem was a PCB fault.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Ok, 90% then.

But the PCB mimicking does not usually make a drive "click and whirr".

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

There is a difference between WD5000AAKS SE 16 (old model) and WD5000AAKS Blue Power series, regarding the head or PCB problem, IMHO

The real problem can not be known for sure remotely, anyway. We can not assume head or PCB always become the main problem of said models before proper diagnostic done.

Would not be the 1st time a client confuse the calibration noise with clicking =)) Also CD sound is to my ear more like the calibration sound then the harsh click of death =) Anycase if we get a sound sample here to a certain degree id be able to make an assumption.

Off topic, but have the forum gurus thought about collecting or recording the characteristic and typical sounds for:

• WD calibrating
• WD seeking continuously on a bad sector
• WD spin up, seek, spin down
• WD clicking
• WD needing its bearings lubricated
• WD head scratching the platters
• Seagate calibrating...
• ...You get the point

Then there would be a central point to which newbies could at least have a starting knowledge of how to describe their drive's sound!

http://files.hddguru.com/download/Hard% ... g%20Noise/

not all, but helpful

Failing / failed hard drive sounds:
http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

Noises that indicate a defective drive:
http://web.archive.org/web/200510160107 ... enDocument

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.