Hey.

I have a WD 500GB WD5000AAKS (WD5000AAKS-00YGA0) but one day it started saying "Primary Slave Hard Disk Fail" in BIOS and I was not able to do anything with the drive. I tried it in another computer without luck, and then took it back to the original computer again. When i turned on the computer a small amount of smoke appeared from the HDD and it was dead! I then found out that the smoke came from the PCB, so I ordered a new one, and swapped the old ROM chip to the new PCB.

I hoped it was enough to fix the drive, but sadly im back to the beginning with the "Primary Slave Hard Disk Fail" in BIOS message.

Any suggest to how i solve my problem? I would really love to get my data out of that drive!

Best regards
Christian

When ordering PCB, what did you match?

Upload a Photo of the chip you transferred.....

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Yes, I would love to see that too.

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Erm...

Which chip would that be?

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I matched this information from the PCB:

PWB 2060-701444-004 REV A

The chip was transferred by a professional company in Denmark and took approximate 2 hours. So it is quality work! Cant take a picture at the moment as the PCB is mounted to the HDD, so here is a picture of the old PCB and the donor chip:

http://www.carstensens.dk/IMAG0040.jpg

if PCB model same good enough for matching. but for this kind of PCB we don't swap chip often. we do firmware transfer instead of. read adapter original PCB or hard drive(read firmware from hard drive and rebuild adpater) program into good PCB. this way more stable than swap chip. please let me know if you need help or need PCB. i can handle it with reasonable price.

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What they have done is transferred the MCU (which incidentally does have the ROM info inside it, but it must be fully functioning), not a ROM chip as such.

(We did wonder as there is no external ROM chip on this model)

What happens with the drive now with the new PCB, does it spin up and sound normal? Or still dead?

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When i try to start it up I can hear that the HD tries to spin up but fails, then it try again and again and again until it stops trying. Meanwhile a small whistle can be heard 2-3 times.

Any idea of what I have to do?

And thanks for the help so far!

Most likely FW /head(s) / Preamp problem.

You have to send the drive to a reputable DR company. Sorry but at this point there's nothing you can do yourself.

Okay that was a shame. Do you have any idea of what the cost would be for that? And do you have any suggestions of cheap companies?

Does it sound like stiction (heads stuck to platters) or a seized motor? Was is the motor controller chip (eg SMOOTH) that burned up?

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It is very hard to say, as the sound is very low. Have even tried to record it, but not with a good result. I can try again if it would be for any help?

The company who changed the chip think that the burned part was around the place where the power cord for the HDD is attached. But it was difficult to see they said.

Here are some sound samples from failed drives:
http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php
http://web.archive.org/web/200510160107 ... enDocument

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