Hi,

a few weeks ago my Mybook World Edition external harddrive stopped working. After opening the external cover I found a 500GB WD5000AAKS-00TMA0 SATA harddrive.

I tried the hardrive directly inside a PC, but it gave the same problems. The drive just starts spinning, but seems not to find the starting point. After spinning the drive makes some noice, like a hardrive which is searching/copying data. After a few attempts the drive stops and starts spinning again. This cylus repeats a few moments. After the bios could not find the drive, the drive stops spinning.

I found a lot of information about these kind of problems and in most cases the PCB is faulty. I removed the pcb and found some foam between the metal cover and the PCB. Th foam shows black spots, which seem to be the result of a too high temperature furthermore some pins of chips are black.

It seems my PCB is broken, so I need a new PCB. I found a lot of information you need to replace the PCB with the correct version. I've a WD5000AAKS 00TMA0.

Can anybody help me in finding this PCB or assist is solving these problems? Unfortuantely the data on the drive is not backuped and very important to me. A professional data-recovery company told they could recove the data, but the costs where too high for me.

This sounds more like a head problem, not a PCB, that is why DR company gave you a high quote.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

Is it similar to one of those WD sounds?
Heads...

Seems I say this at least once a week... If the data is important to you, send it to a DR firm. Messing with it runs the risk of making a recoverable drive into a doorstop. If it was something obviously easy, someone here would likely tell you. These drives are a nightmare. If the PCB is actually, bad, it's likely just the tip of the iceberg. For someone who has never had the opportunity, DR prices may seem outrageous. The reason is that recovering drives is difficult, especially this model. If you find a quote below $1000, you're doing good.

When someone would do a very little reseach on a site, they would know the answer within 1st hour, but you have to spend that hour, don't you?

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

I would say stay away from such quotes on such drives.

thank you all for your quick replies. The website with the recorded sounds is very interesting, but I can not find the sound my harddrive is making. The noice is much softer. It just sounds like normal hardrive action. I will try to record the sound tomorrow to listen for yourself.

I found also another topic about this issue and this person found a sollution by replacing the PCB:
wd5000aaks-00tma0-failure-t9420-20.html

Nevertheless it is always difficult to make the correct diagnoses. I think $1000,- or in my case €1000,- is far too much money to recover such a drive. That's why I take the risk in finding the sollution by myself.

I really appreciate all your responses and effort. Tomorrow I will post the soundfile if possible.

Well, it's not necessary to post the sound. If you can't afford the price for dr there's nothing to be ashamed, but don't ask anymore 'what...if...'. Told you what is the problem, so...can't tell you anything different.

As far as I know, I don't have any post from you...

In my opinion this forum is meant to share all our experiences, so we can learn from each other. If I had the money, I went to a expert and never found this forum...I am a real technicien I really want to figure out what happend with this harddrive. If I see any possibilty in fixing the drive, I will try to do so.

Nevertheless for all the others, who are interested in the sound, I've put the MP3 online. Unfortunately I could not add the file to the post, so I used free share file progem. Just follow the link:http://www.flyupload.com/?fid=6527297 scroll down and download the file.(Sorry for all the advertisements)

The quality of the sound it not good, but if you listen carefully you can hear the heads searching for data. Since the head are not making that much sound (actually the sound is quit common) I am not so sure if the heads are damaged.

I am interested if anybody else can say something about this sound.

Hope springs eternal. We tend to see what we want to see, and ignore what we don't. Odds are high you've got a head/preamp problem. On this model, odds of self-help are slim. If you want to open up a drive and play, it might be wise to do so with a junk drive. If you don't screw it up, at least there's a chance someone may recover it someday. You could just wrap it up, put it on a shelf, and maybe someday you will decide it's worth the money to have it recovered. If you want to swap boards, you might even wind up with more than one junk 500Gb drive. Again, we tend to fit problems into what we can do. A board swap is easy, and it'd be really great if that was the problem. However, hope won't change the reality.

Hi,

I had a bunch of these this week. Listed in order of most common

1: Head Crash
2: Stuck Spindle
3: Heads stuck between platter and load/unload ramp ( See picture as example)

I haven't seen any this week with a bad PCB even tho they do look oxidized

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All went well until I plugged the drive in.

thank you for your kind replies. It sure does not help me for fixing this harddrive on my own, but if that's the reality I gues I've to face it.
I requested some additonal quote's in re-covering the harddrive. It seems there are a lot price differences and guarantees. Hopefully I can find someone, who is able to fix the drive for a reasonable price. I've some other hardrives with non important data and will use these as a learning sample.

If anyone thinks he/she can help me and wants to give me a good price, please feel free to send me a message

I guess we can close this topic.

Once more thanks for your time and information.