Hello all I have a Western Digital 500GB hard drive that isn't spinning up. Model is WD5000AAJS. It started it's life inside a WD Essentials external drive. It was working fine until a recent storm and even though it was plugged into a surge protector I fear it got a surge. I tried a new power supply to the external drive to no avail so I took the external drive apart and tried to slave the drive into my desktop PC. It still doesn't appear to be spinning up and it's not showing in disk manager. I get no clicking - nothing at all.

What's the likelihood that it's the PCB that's gone bad? If it's not that then what else might it be? I don't see any obvious burn marks on the board but I also haven't taken it off the drive yet to examine the other side.

If it is likely the PCB what's the success rate of swapping in a new PCB to recover the data? On the PCB itself is printed 2060-701477-002 REV A. The bar code sticker says 2061-701477-100 AB. I've found similar boards on Ebay but I've also read some places that say each board is unique because it holds some calibration information about this particular drive. Any thoughts on the best bet to recover? I don't need the drive to work long term. Just long enough to copy the info off it. Thanks in advance.

Very likely your pcb is faulty.
Do you know about TVS diodes?

Search about those on the forum, the pcb may work again if you pull off them, but if still not work you have to swap the pcb with good donor (and swap also the ROM).

To swap ROM are needed special equipment (expecially if rom is embedded into MCU).
Can you do a picture of your pcb (component side)?

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My firmware database:
https://mega.nz/folder/O01DkBRI

I'll see about taking the PCB off tonight and getting a picture of the chip side. I did some more reading last night and saw this guide on swapping PCB's

http://stores.ebay.com/hddSupplier/PCB-Swap-Guide.html

and here's a PCB that matches what I have

http://www.ebay.com/itm/WD-500GB-WD5000 ... 1230194260

It is as easy as the guide suggests? I've soldered before but not on PCB's. The idea of a heat gun sounds easier.

Here's my PCB Kinda hard to tell from the pictures but there is some discoloration on the board itself in a couple of places - the chip in the middle and some of the smaller components towards the bottom of the image. You can also see the discoloration in the foam.

Well that pic didn't turn out full size. Let's try this. Mods, feel free to insert this IMG tag into previous post if you want.

The pic is too small, do it again in high resolution

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My firmware database:
https://mega.nz/folder/O01DkBRI

I reposted after I saw it was too small but had to wait for moderator approval. If you need higher resolution than that I do have it, just not sure where to host it.

I did more reading around last night and it looks like the drive specific data is stored on the U12 chip. This is on the left hand side of the picture just above the middle screw hole.

Most of the videos I've been watching on how to do this have been using a heat gun. But the only heat gun I have has quite a large opening on the end - I'm worried about damaging the other chips around the U12. Would I better off attempting it with a soldering iron with a fine tip or should I give the heat gun a try? It looks like it's just held in place with 1 solder on each end of the chip.

This Pcb has NO u12 chip (8 legged)...the adaptive data is in the large chip (marvell), but it looks burnt as well and might be gone...you need pro assist.

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

If the Marvell chip is gone what's required to get the drive working again? I'm just trying to get an understanding of cost. Thanks.

Shouldn't be too expensive, just needs some pro tools and someone who knows how to use them.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

You can purchase a 1 month licence for WDMarvel for US$9. I haven't used the tool, but I believe it should be able to regenerate the ROM for a replacement board.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

So I've heard. If it does what it says on the tin then it should do it, but I've never used it.

Of course you'll need a good semi-compatible donor ROM from same family to allow access to mods via ID to extract the mods containing the ROM image files, I would imagine.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Thanks everyone for the quick answers, I definitely appreciate it.

Any worry about the fact that it used to be inside a Western Digital Elements enclosure? Saw someone post elsewhere that sometimes the data is encrypted when passing through the enclosure bridge board.

Elements models are not encrypted. It's the Essentials models that you need to worry about.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Your drive needs to have a PCB replaced with one from same family. Than the modules can be extracted and ROM can be rebuilt.