Hi, I've had this 500GB HDD for about eight years and after trying to diagnoise an assumed motherboard / PSU problem, this drive suddenly ceased to be recognised by any computer in the BIOS, Windows and piece of software on CD. When connected I think I can feel it spinning up and it gets pretty hot after ten minutes or so, I'm just wondering if there's any software I can use to possibly get it regonised again. I've read up on MHDD but never used it. I backed it up a while ago so I can't think of anything vital I've lost, but it would be helpful to know if there's something I could do to revive it briefly.

I also lost an SSD during this motherboard charade but thought I'd leave it for the other section.

Appreciate any advice on this, thanks.

Could we see detailed photos of both sides of the PCB? Are there any heat marks on the foam pad?

The failure mode of the SSD may gives us a clue as to how each item failed.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Here's the photos I could get. I don't have the right tools to unscrew the hdd pcb so can only offer one side sorry.

There's four photos of the ssd.

Every chip that was powered from the +5V supply has been destroyed. This is consistent with an overvoltage event on this rail.

Be aware that swapping modular PSU cables between different PSUs often causes these problems. This is because the pinouts are not standardised. It is quite possible for +12V to be impressed on the +5V pins in such cases.

This is what I expect you will find on the component side of your WD PCB:

Catastrophic failures in Western Digital PCBs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php? ... 119&p=5033

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Amazing that you can tell all that just from those images.
So there's no way I'm going to revive those drives then (I haven't got the tools or the talent to do any resoldering)?

I remember when the system suddenly refused to boot, during trying to diagnose previous errors, with the fans spinning up and then shutting down. I narrowed it down to the ssd, the system booted with a spare sata power cable (from the original box) but the ssd was dead. The system booted with the hdd attached but it was only after that I realised it was dead as well.
I can only put it down to the cable being faulty, but then I still lack confidence in the psu due to RAM stick errors. The psu is typically just out of warranty.

The SSD appears to have a short circuit on the +5V supply. This is what is causing the PSU to shut down. Typically there will be a short kick from the fans prior to shutdown.

BTW, if your HDD is spinning, then it will have some other problem.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

So it may be worth running MHDD on the hard drive to see if it can pick it up?

I may as well destroy the ssd.