We were the first to open it and this is what we saw. I'm guessing some kind of external contamination made the seal fail. I put the "A" there.

_________________
Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Can you post a closer pic of broken seal? Any 'uncommon' smell? This case makes me curious...

acetone or some other agressive solvents vapors could make that. And rubber should be sticky after that
IMHO
but it has nothing to do with clicking

_________________
SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

Here same problem; clicking and shutdown. The date on the disk: 11 dec 2006.
The seal was just fine here. No solution...

Any sort of internal smoking or burning would have left scorch or smoke marks on the lid.

That seal does look dodgy to me

_________________
The last I heard of God he was worshiping me

P.s. Always check your PCB is working fine before doing anything with the heads. Even try ROM swaps etc. can save you a whole heap of trouble in the future.

Anyone who says clicking is not part of a PCB failure is a complete novice

_________________
The last I heard of God he was worshiping me

Yes and with clicking and shutdown 50% its pcb problem IMHO .

I still give the same advice : CHECK THE READ CHANNEL. A proper digital sampling scope doesn't cost the world and can give you a quick and accurate diagnose. Brand new : about 7000 EUR / 8500 $ , used and recertified about 60 - 70% of the new, and they are appearing on the used/surplus market. It pays for itself and also is useful for checking other kind of defects.

Q: Can you post a closer pic of broken seal? Any 'uncommon' smell? This case makes me curious...
A: If enough people want a closer look I can do that but would need to take it apart again.

Q: acetone or some other agressive solvents vapors could make that. And rubber should be sticky after that
IMHO but it has nothing to do with clicking
A: Seal is not sticky or anything out of the ordinary. Its feels like something dried it out. I believe what ever caused the seal to fail also got inside the drive and harmed the platters. The failed drives heads worked in a donor drive.

Q: Any sort of internal smoking or burning would have left scorch or smoke marks on the lid.
A: Heads worked in another drive and nothing looked burned or had a smell.

Q: P.s. Always check your PCB is working fine before doing anything with the heads. Even try ROM swaps etc. can save you a whole heap of trouble in the future.
A: pcb was tested against a known good drive and found to be good.

_________________
Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

You deffinately have a surface problem.
Drive was not dropped, heads are good= to surface.

If you have microscope, check the surface with it to make sure.

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

Can I doubt on this ?

_________________
SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

Doomer, please give us your opinion.

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

When WD HDD clicks several times then powers down and reaches DRD and RDY, Ive always found this to be head related.



So no issues here with head alignment.....

I had same problem, with many drives, this model has a problem in heads 6 and 7, you should disable them, from ROM, then you can continue, head swapping usually never succeeed with this model.

Hello What a great Christmas present to get on Christmas Day my Hard drive dying on me.

I was playing Maple Story (online game). When I closed out the game it crashed so I rebooted and I got a blue screen saying something on the lines the hard drive was un mounted.

The drive would not load up in safe mode which I tried several times. It would always get stuck on the mud.sys file. Here is a website on that:
http://forums.jinx.com/post.asp?method= ... ORUM_ID=13

I got on my laptop and looked for an answer on this and tried several things. One site recommended unplugging the cables and then plugging them back in which i did. I also reset my bios. After doing this my hard drive started clicking. I went from a drive that got stuck on a sys file to a drive that is now clicking.

I also tried the drive on my parents computer that supports Sata and I still had the same drive clicking and the drive was not recognized via bios and didn't show up under my computer. The cables where double checked and I also used new sata cables with no luck.

I need my computer to work so I bought another Sata drive and have my system up and running again but I'm missing all my Digital Photography pictures (that I took with my Camera), Document Files and work files. I got a few estimates for about $800 to $1200 dollars but since getting layed off at DHL I am unable to spend extra money now. I recently lost my job at DHL Express (about 40,000 of us did) so money is very tight now.

My hard drive is a WD5000KS 500 gb drive and about 50% of the drive was full. I am running Windows XP Pro SP3. The system was made by Digital Storm Online about 2 years ago (when i had money). The computer has worked great since then.

MDL WD5000KS - 00MNB0
Date: 18 Oct 2006
DCM: HCACAJAAB
WC ANU - 102 7068
PCB Board Says: 2060-701383-001 REV A (There are no big black flat chips on the outside of the board
5 screws hold the PCB board to the hard drive
Serial#: 2061-701383-E00 AH XS 3H19 1BKE 1 0004140 7144
Some# on the back side of the case: 1111-TJX 01P YC6921CH

Hopefully all the numbers are correct. I have not dismantled the Hard Drive yet.

I contacted Scott at MyHardDriveDied.Com I saw a 7 part series on hard drives on YouTube about the workings of a hard drive. If I understood the videos correctly I should be able to download my files even if the drive is not mounted or shows in my computer. Will I be doing more damage using a drive that is clicking.

I downloaded and burned a copy of Knoppix to a CD and did a bootup from that. I plugged in my Damaged WD5000KS drive but it wasnt recognized but it was worth a shot. Any suggestions would be great. I believe my hard drive is under warranty from WD. Manufacture date 18 october 2006. All they will do is send me a refurbished HD out again. I want to see if I can repair my drive and get all or at least part of my files off the hard drive.

I would be in debt to anyone that can help me.
Michael

If you want your files back, you should store the drive until
you can afford to pay a pro to recover them.
Your chances of DIY are slim and none.

If you believe the videos, do it. If you loose your data, blame yourself and the videos. It's like snake oil for serious disease. If you believe in internet bullshit there's nothing an expert can do or say, except 'learn at your own expenses'. Till now the data is safe into the drive, just wait better times.