So after reading and reading, I'm still not quite sure what I'm getting myself into.

I have a WD5000AAKS Western Digital drive, 500GB. It was running fine when it suddenly spun down. Now it will not spin up at all. Interesting enough, the logic board seems to have some life, because I get this in the kernel log when I plug it in:

[18746.085994] ata4: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x10200 action 0xe frozen
[18746.085996] ata4: irq_stat 0x00400000, PHY RDY changed
[18746.085998] ata4: SError: { Persist PHYRdyChg }
[18746.086003] ata4: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps
[18746.086005] ata4: hard resetting link
[18746.808488] ata4: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 310)
[18746.819460] ata4: EH complete

None of which does me any good - the platters still don't spin up.

I'm guessing that the control board is bad, and/or the motor is bad. I took the board off, inspected it thoroughly. No sign of damage, over heating, etc. Found four diodes, D1-D3 and one unmarked diode. All tested good.

Can I just get another board off of the same model drive? Does it have to be the same number (771640-202), or is this not a feasible option?

If I were to get another drive of the same model, is transferring the platters from the non-spinning drive to the one that spins an option? Or does that require a clean room and special tools?

I'd really like to recover the data from the drive, but paying $500+ for a pro service is out of my budget, and beyond the value of the data.

Is there an 8-pin chip at location U12?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Yes, U12 is an 8 pin chip, soldered to the board, surface mount.

this is correct one, but are you familiarized with welders, and hot air welders?

if not contact with loal pro, i think here anybody makes for you this work for a few $$

can you upload a PCB Pic where we can see U12 and other electronics?

Hi Spildit,
Yes, This is another good option, Do you use PC3K for this?
But if you can use welder is easy to change it. But your way is correct too.