Hi guys,

I have a big issue with one of my laptop's HDDs, have two drivers (HDD which currently is dead and a SSD running Windows on). I've tried to recover a very old HDD (partner's one) and in my process I got recovered around 3000 viruses. My HDD was used only for data and wasn't bootable at all. However, the next day I started up my machine the second HDD kicked (presumably) in as a bootable device and went in MS-DOS saying that my antivirus is trying to clean up my machine. I forced closed my machine from the power button, removed the HDD and tried to boot from my SDD. It all worked fine, booted in Windows, all good.

I put my HDD in a docking station trying to move all my data to be on the safe side but to my surprise the HDD failed to start, it just overheated and nothing else, completely dead. In about 20 seconds you can barely keep your hand on it. I thought the docking station got dodgy, even though has been used the previous evening and even I'm using it and seems to be fine. I removed it from there and plugged it back in my laptop, the exact same thing happened.

I was looking online to get a board identical and try to swap the board around and then with the heat gun try to swap the BIOS chip as well. I found one HDD today but the capacity is different (mine is 750GB and the donor will be 500GB), however the board is identical to my patient one. If you need more detail to check compatibility, please let me know and I'll write it all here, or perhaps upload pics.

Do you have any idea what this may have caused it and if this would be a good idea to recover my drive?

Any help would be really appreciative.

Thanks a lot guys

First off, you can't just cold swap the PCB. However, as long as the PCB number is the same it will work after you transfer the chip labeled U12 to the new board. As to why it's heating up, it may relate to the motor control chip. Sometimes that chip can go bad and get very hot. Hopefully, the motor itself isn't seized or short circuited as that would be a much more complex case.

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

Hi guys,

Thanks a lot for your help.

Data-medics - Regarding the control motor chip you might be right as I've tried to investigate that and when I removed my HDD from the laptop, being hot, I took the board out and only one chip was hot out of three. I thought that might be the controller chip but according to you said, you might be right.

Spildit: The drive doesn't spin at all, doesn't make any sound. Regarding the virus exactly those were my thoughts, it must be a very clever virus. I don't think it had time to encrypt or do something as I've been really fast in turning the machine off, might have done some but definitely not all, in the worst case scenario. I don't really see how the heads could have got stuck but fingers crossed they didn't. I thought that the docking station might have killed the HDD but still don't see how as it's been used many times, even after this HDD got faulty, but who knows. Being fair, I've never used one of those external programmers but I'm very keen in finding out where to buy and how they work. But how could I read the board if it's dead? The only sign of life I can see at the moment is only because it's getting hot, otherwise dead. I've read your post regarding the external programmers but you're using a HRT card which unfortunately I don't have Probably my only solution would be to swap the BIOS chip around.

Thanks a lot and looking forward for your reply.

I really appreciate your help

I just thought to give you the board info from both drives to check compatibility, from my perspective it should work just fine:

Patient:
MDL: WD7500BPKT-75PK4T0
Date: 21 APR 2013
DCM: HHOTJHB
Board: 2060-771629-006 REV A
There is also a sticker on the motor: 71211-T7Y-02, S1 L3313EJ
Capacity: 750GB

Donor:
MDL: WD5000BPKT-75PK4T0
Date: 25 MAR 2013
DCM: HAOTJAK
Board: 2060-771629-006 REV A
There is also a sticker on the motor: 71211-T7Y-02, S1 L3316EJ
Capacity: 500GB

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate your help.

You might want to check one more time before you move on to a donor PCB and ROM swap. Turn off music, fans, anything in that room that makes noise. Put your ear right next to the drive, are you sure there is not a buzz or ticking noise right when you power it up?

_________________
Blizzard Data Recovery

Hi Blizzard,

To be fair, I've tried that when I've realised the HDD stopped working but at the moment and I couldn't hear anything at all, I've connected it 3 times using different sources of input and all it did overheated, no sign of life other than already mentioned. I'm a bit afraid to re-plug it as I don't want to cause more damage. I hope the internals are ok at this point. Thanks a lot for your input.

Hi Spildit,
Thank you for your reply. I do have a multimeter at home, and I can take high resolution pictures with no problems at all. I have already PM'ed @fzabkar and looking forward for his reply. Regarding on what you said above, once I get home from work tonight, I'll try to download the DEMOs provided by you and just take the board of another WD and see what happens. I have no other devices to read HDD apart my laptop and docking stations. However, I can even try and plug the board straight in my laptop with a SATA cable connected it from my board outside my laptop, I'm not sure whether makes any difference, as for this I can use a docking station that provides power from my USB, it only needs 5V as far as I know. External programmers I don't have at all, and if I am to buy one, I don't really know which one and where from (that's the key as I might get one that it's not up for the job). If I connect the board using the onboard port from my laptop or my docking station, do you think would that work to read and write the ROM to the new board, without using any external programmer?

Thanks a lot and really much appreciated all your help guys. Honestly I really do.

http://ep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-144375849714 ... 9232-7.gif

If you remove the PCB and power it on its own, does any chip heat up?

The SH6601AF chip is the motor controller. It may heat up if the spindle motor is stuck.

If you have a multimeter, measure the resistances between the A,B,C,CT terminals at the motor. They should be around 1 ohm.

There are other voltage test points for you to check, but I'd rather annotate your own photo of the PCB.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi fzabkar,

Thank you a lot for joining the conversation and trying to help me out to get at the bottom of this issue I have. To be fair, your point is very valid, I haven't tried powering the board without the drive but will try tonight, if not, maximum tomorrow. To be fair, I'm a bit sceptical as I don't want anything bad to happen, even though doesn't really look too good at the moment. I do have a multimeter, but don't really know where all those points are.

Spildit, I've installed the software provided but unfortunately I don't have x86 OS and neither of them work. Currently I'm trying to run them as x86, should be a trick to do so under x64 platform, but another issue might be that I have Windows 10. Will see how it goes and will let you know.

Thanks so much for your help and really much appreciated.

The safest thing you could do is to transfer U12 to a donor PCB. There are PCB suppliers who will do this at no additional charge.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hi Spildit,

Yes I hope that as well. Thanks for taking the time to help me out with TeamViewer. The faulty and good board behaves very differently, you could tell from distance that the board is faulty. I've also identified the exact chip that's getting hot and according to Spildit it's the spindle chip. Now, I'm searching for a London company to be able to dump the ROM of the faulty PCB or copy it over to the donor PCB. I wouldn't really want to use the heat gun at this point, I'm trying to find a company that can do that for me, hence I don't have an external programmer, and then we see what's next. I'll keep you updated and taking this opportunity I'd like to thank you so much for all your help. We keep in touch anyway

Hi,

OP, did you make any progress towards recovering data from your dead drive?

I am in a similar situation with the same drive...

Please give us an update.

Thanks!