Hi guys,

I have a WD disk, with a broken head. So I ordered a spare (LBA and last 3 DCM matches), and replaced it. I've created a homemade tool to keep the heads from touching each other. I know WD has a screw for head-alignment, so I hoped for the best. I also replaced the PCB. I was as carefully as I could.

Drive spins up normally again, without nasty clicks. But, TestDisk displays the drive as 11TB. It should be 500GB. And it's not initializing.

Can someone maybe explain to me why it doesn't initialize and what I can do about it?

Thanks in advance!

Nux

Why did you replace the PCB?

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Because with the old PCB, the (new) head clicked, for some reason. With the PCB from the spare, the disk spins up normally.

Then the head swap didn't work.

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But it won't be cheap now you've messed with it

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Can you explain that? Because the new head seems to work fine now.

Thank you . I know that company.

No it doesn't "work fine"... The drive still doesn't work!

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I think the head is fine. So please explain to me why you think it's not. "The head swap didn't work", does not help me at all.

this is what I am saying about tolerances.. your eyes and hands cannot physically detect the even 10 times the force required to do damage to parts of what I call the drive "system" - head arms, head suspension, lining everything up. it would be impossible to know if the head works properly without tools found in a DR Lab.

I am not ragging on DIY, in fact I myself will nearly always do DIY in every aspect of life where possible. But you have to know your limitations.

Doesn't matter how badly you want this to work, and how careful you think you are - these things are not easy.

you might get some DR Professionals that hate DIY, and will; always suggest for you to take it to a lab... but you have to think that if these guys are publicly saying it, and mostly identifying themselves with their real identity, then they are risking bad press if they start saying things that are not true. This situation the help they are giving you is to say that it is beyond a DIY. this is real help and should be taken as such. I am not sure what else diagnosis can be given after a few lines of text from a layman, opposed to how they would do it normally by hooking it up to equipment and physically looking at it with years of experience behind their eyes.

no-one wants you to lose your data, and no-one really want you to pay lots of money. but you have to know your limitations and be realistic.

The more I know about hard drives, the less I am inclined to try DIY, aside for some standard issues.

The replacement board that you used has a different ROM version from the original, so the POST processes don't work, or don't work correctly. With the proper PCB, the clicking occurs because the drive is trying to find the Service Area but can't. It then spins down to protect the drive from additional (mechanical) damage.

Let's say you bent a head in the replacements (not hard to do without tools and experience). The associated platter would probably be scratched up by it. If so, when you put the other PCB on the drive, it would go to town, making your drive even less recoverable second-to-second, because it wouldn't know there was a problem (and hence when to quit).

This is just one of thousands bits of info that professional data recovery requires, that DIY folks can't possibly know.

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Thank you guys for explaining it to me.