The above drive suffered a major power surge. The SMOOTH chip was toast. I have a donor board (integral Controller/ROM). The drive would not power up initially, so I was testing the motor windings and it suddenly came to life. Drive now has the usual WD spin up three times/click/shut down. I cannot get into the board even in Kernel mode. As this has an integral ROM I also need to re-create the ROM from the SA. I have opened the drive and see no visible damage to the preamp or heads, but I guess this could have blown with the power surge. Would you suggest a head swap, or is there anything else I can try?

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Is donor PCB from the same model HDD?

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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!

Yes it is. Exact model/family/board number.

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Then I expect your preamp is toast

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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!

Thought so.... Many thanks for the help

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Most likely it is preamp, but it might be worth trying to hotswap the pcb and see if you can read tracks. Assuming that the headmap is the same of coarse.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

If D3 and R67 were damaged, then that would support the dead preamp diagnosis.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.