Hello,

Before I discovered this handy website I tried to do a little PCB swap on a HDD containing non-critical data.

In my ignorance I tried to install a PCB from a green WDigital HDD on a black one

Now when I re-installed the PCB on the original Green drive it spins, but does not mount. I cannot see any damage on the board (although I am novice), and it was working perfect before i messed with it.

Have i fried the board? Or is it something to do with the way I am reinstalling it?
Any help will be much appreciated. I have read dozens of topics on this website before posting,looking for a similar situation, in order not to waste your time.

Thank you.

PDB- 2061-701537-ROO AD on Western Digital 640GB

Redback

this is a joke, right?

Yeah,
I'm a comedian looking for a magician.

But will settle for someone who isn't so rude

WD PCB board contains adaptive data. You can not just swap a PCB board from one drive to another without matching them and moving adaptive data to the board. This is not something that you are going to fix on a DIY now and should never of moved the board in the first place. What was wrong with your original drive. You can cause a lot of damage and now your PCB is franked. Might try to RMA the drive but would not tell them what you did to it.

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Iorana Haraharaini

Frankly, I wouldn't. Shame on you, Ann, for suggesting such a thing.

This is actually a perfectly legitimate question.. and if you think THAT was rude, then this is clearly your first time here. I'd almost venture to call that a kind reply. The question was asked because to a data recovery professional, this is such a basic no-no, that one would never consider such an act. Much in the same way you would not put a car part from a Mercedes into a BMW...

To the novice, a circuit board is a circuit board.. but the truth is the inner workings of just the circuit board of a single hard drive manufacturer are the result of thousand of man hours of research and programming. I realize I'm wasting my breath because you just came here for a "quick fix" so here is your answer, and you aren't going to like it:

You have now damaged both hard drives. The original black drive may be damaged much worse than before and the "working" green drive is now also fried. My only suggestion would have been that you should have asked this question prior to attempting the swap. You would have likely gotten quite a few smartass answers, but they would have all told you this was a bad idea.

you can RMA it, they do not ask anything

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ZeBong
" что случилось в России - останется в России "
" Россия еще раз"

I don't know how physically similar the two boards are. Perhaps you could upload side by side photos of both boards for the benefit of others?

However, the first thing that caught my attention was not the fact that the drives would have had different adaptives, but that the two drives rotate at different speeds, in which case the adaptives wouldn't come into play until the drive's PLL could lock onto the data stream, or its servo information for that matter. But perhaps a "guru" could clarify that for us.

I'm assuming that the drive's target RPM is stored in the serial EEPROM, or perhaps it is hard coded into the motor controller or MCU chips. Nevertheless, when you installed the green 5900 RPM board on a black 7200 RPM HDA, the drive would have spun up to 5900 RPM, after which the heads would have moved to the firmware zone. Even if the servo were working, I suspect that the PLL (centred on the expected 7200 RPM data rate) would not be able to handle such a large disparity in the bit rates. In any case, the flying height at 5900 RPM would be significantly (?) lower, because the heads fly on an air bearing whose characteristics are dependent on a fixed rotation rate.

BTW, I'm not a DR guy, so the above is only conjecture.

There is no reason he can not RMA this drive. Frank why be so helpful to others and now discourage this guy from RMA the drive that is under warrenty? Please do not ansswer.

Redback what was the original problems with your HDD? You say first drive has non-critical data on it. So this means you were just trying to see if it could be done and work or was there a problem in the drive. What made you think it was the PCB in the first place. The drive would not spin? Would not been seen in BIOS?

Go ahead and RMA the WD Green drive. There is so many problems in these drives as it is this will not be a problem to send it in for a new one.

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Iorana Haraharaini

Why? Because it's dishonest, plain and simple.

After literally hours of training...... little johnny became quite an expert in spotting PCB's that 'looked' damaged.

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Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 19

Thats one way to keep your Son occupied. hahaha

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