Hey guys, I have a few year old WD5000AAKS-00TMA0 that I just recently noticed hasn't been working. It might not have been working for months but I just have not noticed. It comes up in the BIOS, but it does not come up in Windows 7. I noticed that Windows takes forever to boot when this drive is hooked up, but is quick when it is not. I took the drive out of the system and used an external USB hook-up to diagnose but had no luck. When the drive turns on, I hear the drive spinning up, then I hear about 5 or 6 clicks as if it is reading something off the drive, and then the spinning stops and it repeats in an infinite loop. When using the USB hookup, Windows makes the new hardware hookup sound every time the spinning starts up, but the drive never appears in My Computer. Any ideas what kind of problem this hard drive is having? Is there any way I could possibly just access a listing of files on this drive? Thanks.

This problem is quite common in WD HDD. If you can see it in the BIOS you might want to try and clone it to another HDD. This is one option. If this oen does not work then you should really seek some pro advice on this one. Heads in these drives fail quite often and this causes these problems you are having now. The only real DIY you can do on this one is try to clone it if it is seen in BIOS. You can boot from a Linux CD and use ddresecue from Linux and see if you can get it cloned there for you.

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Iorana Haraharaini

Impossible : it clicks and spin down. Head(s) gone and end of DIY. Maybe there's some hope but with specialized equipment.

Should I try something? All I really want to see is a folder list on the drive..

It is my understanding that the Tornado family, of which the WD5000AAKS is a member, often suffers from board faults whose symptoms are those of faulty heads or bad media. Therefore it may be worth considering a board swap, but you will need to find a PCB supplier, or DR shop, who is willing to transfer your board's unique "adaptive" data to your donor. Unfortunately these data are probably internal to the large Marvell MCU chip, so it's not as easy as moving an 8-pin flash IC.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Let me assist with your understanding of the problem.

Some other WD family drives have clicking and spindown as a result of PCB failure. But that cause / effect is not often seen in the Tornado series. A Tornado with a bad PCB will usually come ready; the board failures will mimic read problems or bad sectors. Clicking and spindown with are usually due to the failure of one or more heads.

The client would be better advised not to waste money on a replacement PCB and firmware reprogramming, but to save for professional DR if the data is worth it.

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

hi
i agree with Jono-ats, also because in case of PCB failure due to ROM corruption i think is not safe to simply change the PCB and swap the MCU with the corrupted ROM... you need to rebuild ROM through the modules and update on a working PCB with professional tool or knowledge about vendor commands.
bye
Luca

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Data Recovery pro in Italy
www.ultrarecovery.com

Or do some "Black Magic" - but everything depends on drive conditions (SA, heads and some other things...) - sometimes tools need some help from humans...

I will respectfully disagree Jono. There was a girl on this very forum who came looking for help. The Tornado drive was clicking heavy, was spining down. Basically did everything a media/head drive would do. I reprogrammed a board for her and had a 100% clean image after. So it does happen =) Although ill agree that usually the tornados just give me partial image and claim that the rest are bads untill i change the board.

Alexii -- thanks for the data point.

That's why I said "not often seen." I didn't say "never". It does happen -- just not as common as the other failure mode.

We take time away from pretty full schedules to try to add things to discussions. We are dealing with people who may not have an accurate description of their problems and with drives that we've never seen and aren't likely to see. That's why I speak in terms of the odds of a failure. Of course, I don't KNOW if that is their PARTICULAR failure. But it's the best that I can do, and often I wonder why I even bother . . . nomesayin'?

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

Sry Jono , reread the post and you did in fact say not often. Chalk it to English being my 2nd. Plus u know u are my hero =). After all the crazy head swap combinations u performed blasting to the side all "compatibility rules" =))

OP can u post the sound of those clicks as you apply the power to the drive plz ? I wonder if they are clicks or just the calibration sound and then power cycle and calibration again in the loop... Dont use the MOBO , get the Sata / USB controller.

Now I'm confused. Taking into account Alexii's contrary experience, would I still be wrong to suggest that the client may well be advised to risk a few dollars on a board swap?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Few examples:

8/17/2009 WD5000AAKS-00TMA0 Clicks; major damage to heads and platters

12/9/2008 WD5000AAKS-00TMA0 Clicks and was opened by Ontrack; heavy contamination inside drive, flipped heads, impact marks, damage to outer edge.

9/1/2010 WD5000AAKS-22TMA0 No power; PCB motor cpu blown, all heads flipped, heads stuck at ramp preventing platter from spinning

1/8/2011 WD5000AAKS-00TMA0 Clicks; cust dropped hd, major platter damage, one flipped head, black filter

PCB failure is rare on these drives.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

No worries, mate. And you do very well with English. Much better than I can do with any of the other languages that I try to speak or read!

Sorry if I expressed a bit of frustration.

The field of data recovery is often complicated, and any kind of comprehensive answer to many of the questions that are posed here would warrant pages of explanation, including exceptions to the rule, etc.

The remoteness of everyone and the varying levels of sophistication makes accurate diagnosis quite a challenge. It's an inexact science, to be sure.

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

We work on these drives every day. Offhand, I can't tell you how many we have successfully recovered, but we are usually successful unless there is media damage. From that experience I am able to give some "qualitative" odds about the likelihood of a particular cause and effect (i.e. defect & symptom).

It's a judgement call. If you have a 5% change of being correct, then you are not technically "wrong", but the wiser thing to do (in my opinion) is to put smart money on the other 95%, which would be to assume the heads are bad. And in this case, I think the client's money would be wasted to do a board swap. And I might be wrong, too - But maybe a 5% chance in this case. Does that make sense?

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

Here's an audio clip. After the 5 clicks Windows makes the new hardware sound and the SATA connector indicator light goes on for a brief second, but then the drive spins down and nothing happens. But sometimes instead of spinning down and restarting up, it stays on and makes no noise, but the SATA connector indicator light stays on, but nothing shows up in Windows.

http://kiwi6.com/file/tqsa4623k4

To sum it all up, from my experience , Tornado drives that come through our shop exhibit a wide field of scary symptoms, all amounting to the client being unable to access the data. If the client specifies that they dropped it - its simple. If they swear left and right that the drive was never dropped ~ 80 percent end up being the board ( very rough since i did not look through the paperwork archives =) but my gut tells me that its about that range ). Jono is correct that in most cases the symptoms are not the clicks and spin down, however its still possible. As in any case, proper diagnostic would be the best course of action, especially since a lot of DR companies offer it for free.

And ill have to respectfully disagree with ThatDellGuy. At least in my experience , and the experience of the resources i have access to - tornados are infamous for exactly that. PCB issues.

In conclusion i am basing my answer on the fact that the drive is IDed by BIOS. Chances are in the event of heavy media damage and head failure there will be no id... It improves a little the chance that it will be the board fault. ( U can only guess how many times the clients over the phone say the drive is clicking/scratching and it ends up being the calibration noise =) )

Maybe I got all the crummy ones

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

The link to the audio clip was delayed before it posted a few posts above - let me know what you guys think and let me know what you think the best course of action is. I really just want to see a list of files on the drive because I actually don't even know what's on the drive, so it might be some useless stuff, or it could be something worth saving. Hard to tell without seeing the folder structure.

congrats dude =) Its calibration sound. U have a board problem. =) Donor board needs to be reprogrammed with rom from ur original and u should get not just the file list but everything ( baring any additional damage besides this ).