Hey Guys,

currently I have a WD20NMVW-11AV3S2 drive on my table. Client said, the drive wasn't dropped, it just stopped to work. The drive made the typical sounds like the heads were on the platter. I opened the drive, but everything was OK. But the platters were very hard to rotate. But the platters rotated without any scratchy sound. I also wasn't able to see anything wrong with the drive.

As always, I transferred the ROM to a SATA Board and tried to fire up the drive. But it failed. Still the same, the spindle does not rotate. Does anyone has any idea, what it could be?

Problems with the bearing? Maybe I should heat the drive up a little bit?

Do you mean that you have found heads properly parked on the ramp when you opened the drive?
If so then most likely issue is spindle bearing.

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

if the heads weren't on the platter most likely you have a spindle problem. Position a torx on a screw and make a light and progressive force in order to make it turn, slowly it should return to being free, if it does not go then you will have to do a swap of the plates on a new unit