Hello gentelment,
I seek assistance and or guidance. If I may, I have a couple of questions. I have a mac drive (WD2500AAJS caviar SE), the drive in question stop working one day the pc just would not boot. The drive was removed from the terminal and examined and it appears as though it overheated. This was an assumption based on the foam separating the pcb board from the drive being nice and toasty as well as burned traces over specific areas that lay over the pcb, mcu. When inspecting the board however I have found nothing that seems out of norm. No burned chips, or melted matter anywhere. I still assumed that it might have been the pcb and proceeded to purchase a new hard drive with the same model specs. I proceeded to swap pcbs and plugged the hhd through external usb data cables. drive spun, clicked 12 times, then 3, then 12 again, then 3 again then powered down. I removed the donor pcb and noticed ( a little late I might add)that is a slightly different pcb. ( patient pcb has no u12 chip for ROM but donor pcb does.) and the serial numbers in the pcb's are not entirely the same. Only the 1st 6 digits match. After this I looked into the drive I purchased...it was not the same drive. They are both WD2500AAJS but the donor drive is a Blue caviar.=/
So now on to my questions:
1) Did my mistake cost me the data?
2)If not, can i switch mcu's and still retrieve data? do i also have to remove the u12 ROM chip from the donor for this to work?
3) Do i just need to buy the right drive?
4) is this even a pbc issue?

Any advice and enlightenment as to what i have done would be greatly appreciated. The data stored in this drive is personal and so its value to me is significantly important but would not spend hudreds of dollars retrieving it as it is mostly photos of my kids and family.

Assuming you know the risks of DIY and that its not worth the risk on drives that have important data..

What was the condition of the drive with the original PCB(ie. when connected , was it spinning or making clicking noise ?)



As your PCB does not have external rom at u12, swapping PCB as DIY is not an option.
(It is difficult even for pro with proper tools and experience to replace the MCU without spoiling the Chip and the PCB)

You can try to connect the drive(with its original PCB) to a PC(if you can ), connecting it directly to the SATA port , and check if it detects in the BIOS with the correct model and capacity.

Failed DIY attempts will make the recovery costly and even not possible by a pro later. So if you value your data, take pro help.

Your drive probably has a failed head. The "ugly foam" is normal. Not much you can do by yourself.

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well the original drive and pcb when connected to the computer (through a data transfer cable) it spins up at first then quickly stops. After that there is no change. i am wondering if there is a problem with the pcb at all.

Even if it was a PCB problem, you cant do much about it as DIY, as the rom is internal.

As jono-ats suggested, there are chances of failed heads.

Instead of spending time and money on PCBs , without being able to transfer the rom, and in the process risk the data in the drive,
it would be safe to take pro help .

Or you can try
http://www.donordrives.com/
They do rom transfter to the new PCB(you will have to send the old pcb and drive)

Spin up, few click click noises then spin down?

Classic head failure, not DIY I'm afraid

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

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