Greetings,

New to the forum and ran across it on a google search. I have an older 160GB WD drive that up and failed on me last week. Computer was running fine with no symptoms, came in the next day and it was powered down. Attempted to turn it on and it hung indefinitely at the BIOS. I pulled the HD and tried to put it into another computer as a secondary and experienced a similar thing.

HD spins up with no un-natural noises, but the bios hangs for awhile, doesn't recognize the HD, and then continues to boot from the primary drive. I attempted putting the drive into an external enclosure and can not get it recognized in either Windows XP/7 or Ubuntu.

Due to the drive spinning up like normal and sounding for all intents and purposes fine, I'm assuming that the electronics that control the SATA interface decided to malfunction. Is this a reasonable assumption ? If so, would attempting to replace the PCB be a good course of actions to try to retrieve the data on the drive ?

I appreciate you taking the time to read this.

Thanks,
Dan

Could be a bad PCB, firmware problem, or something else. If it was a bad PCB, you can't just swap it out. ROM data needs to be transferred also. Not possible without moving/soldering correct chip or professional tools.

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Diagnosing exact problem is a very crucial task in recovering data.
Guessing could lead to more damages.

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At the risk of looking silly by replying to a 4-month old thread, I would just like to add that the MCU (88i6745) on these boards is often affected by a fault that mimics bad heads. In such cases a firmware transfer can be done with a tool such as WDR-UDMA or WD HD Pro (US$150). AIUI, it's a single-click operation.

Hope this helps.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.