I have a WD500 which works for about a couple of minutes. It gets recognized in the bios and can see it in windows. It seems like the SMOOTH chip gets really hot and it stops working. After reboot it may or not be recognized in bios until it cools again.

Cooling the drive with a fan prolongs the time to about 3 minutes, not enough to do any backup.

Is it the same of this thread ?

wd500aaks-died-t17898.html

No its a another HDD.

This is an easy fix right now, but if you kill the PCB off in your attempts it will increase the difficulty.

If you can, back up the ROM immediately, I think someone here released some sort of freeware that can do this.


Once you have the ROM backed up, locate matching PCB and be sure to backup its ROM also.


Write the backed up ROM from the patient drive to the new board using utility (if you have one).


Done.


It sounds easy, but without the right software/tools it will not be so easy.



The other option still involves backing up the ROM, but then creating a way to cool the board well enough to image the drive. This is the less preferable method because it risks more damage to the drive.

Will any of these do?
http://nazyura.hardw.net/000006.htm

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

READ can be 'simple'... WRITE doesn't

Too late

Drive is not regonized in bios anymore.