A customer brought in a western digital laptop size external that sounded like something was lightly rubbing on the platters when powered on. The heads never made any kind of noise whatsoever. I opened the drive to find that the lowest head was not properly loading onto the load ramp and was causing the entire stack to get stuck about halfway on the ramp. I was able to remove the ramp and bend the lowest fin such that the heads were able to freely load on and off again and now the drive spins fine but makes typical WD clicks-and-spin-down noise. Is this an alignment issue since I had to take the lid off? Or more likely that the heads themselves were damaged when they got jammed on the ramp?

I've never seen an issue like this before. Being a small external drive it wouldn't surprise me if it had been dropped or mishandled.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

I bet the drive was powered on and off loads of times by the owner to see if it would work. Probably killing the heads in the process. Not un-common

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The last I heard of God he was worshiping me

I agree, Heads likely sustained damage. Who knows how many times the customer powered the drive on and off?


Swap the heads and see what happens; these drives are pretty easy to do a head swap on anyhow.

I have seen this issue, but in my case, the WD head was left the spring, and without the head, the MHA gets under the limiter, and stucked between the ramp and platter.

This is ugly story.

Regards,
Janos

I dont believe alignment is an issue here. Im pretty sure the hda assembly is secured underneath with a single screw.

Hy drscc yes was dropped, that happend many times over wd portable , we had check a lot of cases with that "syntomph" the problem its the head exchange on this models 120 & 160Gb its a difficult problem, i had check too, even i´m thinking the dropped could cause the missalignment of platters too.

Regards

Alrighty... I've got a bunch of similar drives for parts, though the majority of them are the PATA equivalent of this SATA drive. Its DCM code is HACTJANB, some of the ones I have to choose from are pretty similar but not the same, such as HHYTJANB and HACT2HBB and various permutations thereof. Think one of those would work?

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Hello drscc, i had check even if u tried to take off heads from a working donnor hdd and return again the hdd knocks on this models 120Gb & 160Gb, im think its not a head compatibility problem , and we had sucess over toshiba, seagate,fujitsu , samsung , hitachi using 4 heads over 2.5, but im think its the same situation like 3.5 " head exchane over WD

Interesting.

I checked and there does not appear to be a screw holding the HDA in from underneath.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

The WD have two family in this model.
I mean 2 for the 1200 and 2 for the 1600 BE__ .

THe older have screw under, the newer (with the 3 shiny stickers) not have.

Janos

Yep, this is the one with the shiny stickers.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

I've seen this a couple of times now. One head detaches and the head gets stuck between the ramp and platter edge. Hopefully your customer didn't leave it on for too long.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

I've had a couple of these in the past few week. The ones I had were suffering from stiction.

HDD Spaz Tip :

As the HDA is not secure when the lid is off, put the screw back into the HDA when repairing stiction.

I didn't have any alignment issues and got all the data off. I didn't have to remove the HDA though.