My western digital hard drive failed. Details are:
MDL: WD5000AAKS 00TMA0
DATE: 24 MAR 2007

It would knock knock about 10 times. Work occasionally. Now appears completely gone. The PCB board is hot to the touch. Something failed maybe? I'm going to attempt to replace the PCB (printed circuit board) and see if that helps.

Anyone else have same drive similar problem? Did you solve it?

Another easy problem to solve. Simply toss the drive, unless if it's still under warranty. I'm sure you made a full backup of everything important the moment you saw it was working occasionally.

The time between it working occasionally, and failing entirely was about 2 hours.
In that time it was working occasionally I was copying all data off as fast as possible.
Unfortunately I did not get all of it.

Yes the drive is under warranty. Its little over a year old. I was about ready to upgrade to a terabyte drive. I had not done a full data backup in about 6 months.

There are people here looking to fix a broken drive, and those who want their data recovered. It helps to know what you want.

How hot does the PCB get? Does it get hot fast? It's a bit normal for a drive to be warm after running in a computer for a while.

Does the drive spin up now? Any other unusual sounds?

I'm just guessing, but I get the impression you have no intention of paying for the average Data Recovery cost. Even so, if the data is valuable, consider a professional. As you've found, bad drives usually only get worse, and that is even more true with many of the home remedies available.

I'm intent on getting my data back and never using a Western Digital drive again.

The backside of the logic board was hot to the touch after the drive being on only a few seconds.

I removed the logic board to see if there was any identifiable burnt out parts on the logic board. It appears there was a foam strip put between the logic board and the hard drive. I am not sure of the purpose but it appears it did a great job at reducing airflow and keeping the chips on the logic board hot.

Picture will be in next post.

Note picture.

The PCB could be hot because of a problem inside the drive, which is why I asked if the drive spins up now. The board could be bad, but it could also be bad due to something else, and a new board may be damaged.

Whatever drive you get, it will likely fail. The solution is not another brand, but another strategy. Have everything important backed up.

looks like was the Microprocessor burned, send us an photo of the PCB , if u got Mp burned u got , big problem this model 5000AAKs has adaptive information inside

Best Regards

Alberto

Ouch, I didn't notice the smaller imprint in the foam. Hot CPU with adaptives trapped inside is bad news. It's possible a regulator died, or something else is making the CPU heat up, and there is a slim chance the CPU is still good.

Yes, its a big problem that case, we got some cases, too maybe its a common problem on that series WD5000AAKS,

Regards

No, since you removed the pcb.

On the photo, looks like something is wrong with the power supply.

You have a very little chance to get alive again this drive.
The MCU (MP or microprocessor) looks like overheated, but this is not always caused by it is dead.
Sometimes the other components make the overcurrent on the MCU's output pins.

If the data is important, you need to find a pro to measure the pcb's component and/or recover the data.

Regards,
Janos

When there's a price to pay for recovery data turns automatically to 'not important', don't worry.

Yes, i know this situation.
I can see it day by day....

But i am not worrying anyway.
If the data is important, the customer usually know what needs to do.

Janos

Are DVDs a viable and stable backup? I realize this is a monumentally tedious task but at least to have a base to work off of.

Thanks for any enlightenment.

95% the MC is gone. The place where the combo chip sits looks ok, but the processor has left bad marks. As I did not have a 500GB WD in by now, which models do have adaptives in the MC rather than in external SPI flash? It's starting to make me kind of nervous

So, what is the technical meaining of "adaptive information inside".
Are you all stating that there is flash memory that contains platter specific information? What information could it provide? If this is what you are stating, this would seem like an odd thing to do, and just be prone to cause problems.

That means information wich was stored on factory wich could not be replaced, iunique for each disk,

Regards

What should a manufacturer care about things that may give the customer problems as long as it does not come to warranty questions? If they wanted to design HDDs to be easy to recover, they simply would do it. But obviously, they don't care for several reasons.

Hi guys I have a WD5000AAKS-07YGA0 with the same problem (I'm annexing pictures), do you think there is any chance that the MPU might be working?, the BIOS won't recognize the disk, the platters do spin but stop since the drive can't be initialized.
Also, I tried to replace the PCB with a similar one (from a WD5000AAKS-75YGA0, and only one difference on the PCB number, from 2061-701477-900 AD to 2061-701477-900 AE, also the last 5 digits from the DCM match from HANNNT2MAB to HBRCHT2MAB) without success, I'm aware that the firmware has specific data that is unique to the drive, do you think there is a chance of success if I get a drive with exact matching numbers to replace the PCB and hope that both are similarly calibrated? Or maybe if the original MPU survived then change it to the new PCB I already have?

Thank you in advance for all your help.

Oscar.





I agree, nothing like back up, even though, there seems to be an agreement that WD is the brand with the highest failure ratio though.

Oscarvw, What happens when you replaced a board?

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