WD200AB-00BPA1 still not working after ROM and PCB swap

[kovacsp]

Dear All,

I've got a WD200AB-00BPA1, 20G hard disk, producing terrible sounds like (trrrrr, ding, gind, ding, trrrrr, ding, ding, ding).
Recorded sound is attached as Wd200.mp3 for your reference.

wd200.zip

Initial sound and sound after PCB swap.
(zipped mp3 files due to forum rules)

(227.19 KiB) Downloaded 324 times

The bad HDD has the following details:
Model: WD200AB-00BPA1
DCM: HSBAEGYA
Date: 25 nov 2000
Made in: Malaysia

I've tried to find a donor drive as close as possible, and was lucky enough to find one with same model and same DCM, and only 3 days difference:
Model: WD200AB-00BPA1
DCM: HSBAEGYA
Date: 22 nov 2000
Made in: Malaysia

The two drives next to each other (bad on left side):

Bad drive on left, donor drive on right

Unfortunately, the PCBs are not the same.
The bad one has the barcode: 0000 001003-001A X W OR17 A2WJ 7 00 66 21 0 1214, and V7371 on the other side.
The good one has the barcode: 0000 001003-000C X W OR13 5YJ9 8 00 66 21 0 1217, and V7185 on the other side.
For the first sight, the main differenes are: Hyundai versus Nanya RAM chip, and Atmel versus ST ROM chip, which seem to be equivalent (at least as far as I can see).
Please note that the PCB photos are taken with swapped ROMs!

Bad PCB on left, good PCB on right.
ROMs are swapped!

So I swapped PCBs right away, the terrible sound is gone, drive is recognized in BIOS (at least when it's slave), but still cannot access it.
It's sound is still not good, but a lot better, attached as Wd200-2.mp3

Same after cleaning the contacts and PCB.
ROMs are of different type, but swapped them anyway. The effect is still the same.

Now if I connect it as slave, BIOS does recognize it fast (but still inaccessible afterwards)
If I connect it as master, BIOS auto detection takes ~15 seconds, and fails. I've tried this a lot of times, don't know if this provides any additional info.

Never mind, I connect it as master, run MHDD, which does recognize the drive correctly.
I select it, DRSC and DRDY are on, INDX flashes sometimes, which seems to be fine.
If I ask for ID, it takes ~30 secs to get an answer (BUSY is active while it's waiting). Same for EID and SMART, although results are correct.

Now if I try SCAN, it takes a lot of time to get this result:
Init drive: [RESET]
! ERROR: Drive not responding or operation canceled
[RECAL]
! ERROR: Drive not responding or operation canceled
In the meantime, AMNF and BBK are active.
The scan never gets further than this.

As I'm out of ideas, I kindly ask for your suggestions on what else should I try.

Thanks for your help,
Peter

[gus]

I think that you are close of getting it to work. If you have pc3000 board, you may be able to diagnose the issue fully. Somewhere, there is a firmware issue that prevent you from reading the logical block addressing of the drive. You may try another board, even not close to the exact match that you have. Sometimes, that will work to get the drive going and recover data. These drives are very peculiar in many ways

[pepe]

Different boards can have different power inputs to the preamp that will kill it imediately, so it is not advisable to use such boards.
I could take a look at it if U want.

pepe