Hello,

New to this forum, I'm trying to recover from my sisters Toshiba DT01ACA100 1TB HDD. I understand this is a Hitachi HDD.

When I received this HDD from my sister, the drive would not spin. I ordered a PCB online and replaced the one on the drive after swapping the BIOS chip.

Now the drive spins but Windows Disk Manager lists it as not initialized.

I'm at a loss of what to do, can anyone help?

Thanks,
Dennis

Does it sound like normal?

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

pepe, thanks for the response.

Attached is an audio file. I had to zip the audio file as neither wav nor mp3 were permitted.

Also, my sister said there were storms occurring at the time of the HDD failure.

Dennis

Where is the drive coming from? Directly out of a computer (Windows, iMac, Linux system)? Or out of an external drive (what model)?

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

it does not sound good, heads or preamp or both are gone. Powering it up might have already damaged the data and servo on the surface as well. Not DIY from here.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Can you show us the original PCB?

There are 4 components you need to measure so that we can tell which supply voltage, if any, was affected.

AFAICT, this model had two different PCBs. Are yours identical? (I don't know if it makes a difference)

https://sep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-14437584971410/91711049-6.gif (0A90381)

https://sep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-14437584971410/91711039-6.gif (0A90377)

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks All,

The HDD was internal from a Lenovo ThinkCentre M81, running Windows 7.

The PCB (see attached) has the number 220 0A90377 01 as did the replacement.

Dennis

Near the SATA connector you will see two diodes marked L14 and Z2. Can you measure their resistances with a multimeter? If either is shorted, then this will give us some idea as to what may have happened.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Totally agree, it sounds really nasty.. I'd expect to see rings on that one.
Sorry...

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+1
Based on the sounds:
-NOT a PCB issue, sorry.
-It is internal failure of the reading mechanism and very high chance of disk damage.
Not a DIY case. Likely low to no chance of a successful recovery.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

It did not spin up originally, so it did have to do something with the pcb, but it has other problems surely. Perhaps it got overvoltage and left the heads over the surface, which got stuck there in turn, then they might have got ripped off or bent by the movement, and now he has that nasty sound as a result...
but the story does not change the outcome, not DIY as was said.

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Thanks all for the responses, this is so interesting.

Neither of the diodes are shorted.

I'm concerned, that I tried too hard to get an audio recording with sufficient volume to hear the clicking. I believe folks are hearing a head crash sound when it is really just the motor as the microphone was placed at the bottom of the drive (frame side) close to the motor bearing.

With the naked ear right up next to the HDD, other than the slight whine of the motor you only hear clicking.

I'll try to make a more accurate sounding recording.

Dennis

Just to be clear, I'm referring to the original PCB, not the replacement.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Yes thanks, the original PCB is the one I metered.

Dennis