Hi guys,

I have a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000BEVT-22A0RT0 which is having problems spinning up.

When powered on, you can hear it slowly spinning but then halting and making a 'beeping' sound. The drive then starts to spin up again but does not sound like it is reaching the correct speeds.

My initial diagnosis is a problem with the bearings/motor but I am unable to test because I have been told you are unable to open Caviar Blues due to head alignment issues. (Could someone confirm?)

Does my diagnosis sound reasonable? What other diagnostic tests should I perform?

Many Thanks,
DR

Can you post a sound sir?

Alignment is not such an issue in Mariner series.

Could be heads related issue, in which case attempts to power it could be causing more damage.

If you know little about this HDD maybe you should outsource it...

This isn't for a client, It's more of an personal / research project.

Tried the drive again and seems like it now doesn't spin at all, instead it just makes electronic noises.

Can you describe the noises and the interval of the noises?

If a drive doesn't spin up at all (not your drive in particular) it could be:

-jammed/damaged motor
-failed PCB or component on PCB
-stiction
-ROM corruption
etc

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Data Recovery Cape Town

The heads are parked on the platters instead of in the ramp.

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Loaded the drive again this morning and it now have stop spinning completely.

You can hear two very faint tones which repeat every couple seconds. I'm thinking that the voice coil is creating the sound due to the heads not being able to move (Possible stiction?)

I shall take the drive down to the lab tomorrow to confirm. (100% the drive can be opened?)

Thanks,
DR

Probably now you could have some damage to the surface...

This drive does not have alignment issues with the lid screw.

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Correct!

Opened the drive in the clean room to find this...

Damage to the surface + stiction. That will be difficult

in my opinion, CAN BE DONE, but not 100% data retrial, all depends on those damaged area

i did few cases and was good enough and i was lucky

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The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

here i would charge fairly spare parts to customer - looks like it will be a heads eater.

well,
this depends .if you can guess the area where you think you have the damage might be you can ignore that at all in your readings/clonings .

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Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com