Hello,

I bought a pair of Western Digital Passport external harddrives, a number of years ago within a month of each other. That was probably close to ten years ago.

One of them stopped working with the usual "clicking sound." When plugged in, the light comes on, it clicks, but nothing transfers to the PC.

After a number of trials with different plug-ins, interfaces, I decided to open both of them up and compare the working drive to the non-working drive. The difference is- the working drive's "arm" or "head(?)" moves back and forth over the disc, as it should, and successfully reads the data. The broken one seems to just skip onto the disc and skip back to its starting position- it doesn't seem to be reading like the other one did.

I pulled all the data off my working drive in preparation...

So...at this point, I am thinking that all I need to do is somehow remove the disc with the data on it from the broken drive and swap it into the working drive. Since the working drives "reading arm" works, it should pick up the data. At least, that's my theory. I noticed that the screw that holds the disc in place at the center may be difficult to remove, since it turns the disc when you try to unscrew it.

I guess I am just looking for any insight before I go any further. Should I be thinking about attempting to swap the arm-mechanism instead of the disc...or something else.

I would really appreciate any help you could offer.

My "insight"? Please refer to the "Knowledge Base" part of the HDD Guru forum and start reading.

You've already ventured down the wrong road and are headed towards a dead end.

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

If it was so simple...

When you opened the drives, I hope you used a clean room and also how many disks are in the drive. If there is more than one, you cannot move the disks as they will become unaligned.

If the disk is moved, you will need to swap the firmwhere chip on the PCB board itself. If the drives are the same, then swapping the PCB board would be easer. However, I feel this path can only lead to disaster. Be prepared to kill both drives before the day is out.

Shane

Why do you try this?!?

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

Because people with some mechanical aptitude think that a HDD is fairly simple, and there might be something they can do. It has been the case I am sure where you crack the lid, figure out the issue and fix it - saving yourself a few hundred quid.

The fact that hard drives are so very different to what is first imagined is to be learnt, and this is how we learn

you might say why didn't you read the forum and warnings, but the path to knowledge about how finicky these are is different for all.

best answer to these questions is honesty - you may have already damaged the drive, but take it to a pro.

how often do most people get advice when something happens to pay $900 or so and they just accept it and say "yes, I had better do that" without some sort of hesitation or option weighing.

personally I would not like people to accept blindly anything, but at least ask why.

should never do anything without a reason.