Hi all
i have the above drive in for repairs. This drive has been looked at by a different company and it is now here.
so i will describe this as best as possioble. original drive board number is 2061-701444-k00
Drive according to customer was dead, he took it in for repairs to someone else along with a donor drive, but he onlly supplied them with a spare board part number 2061-701444-004.
apparantely the drive has a blown smooth chip they used a donor chip from the above board onto the original board
Drive will not power up at all.

I confimred the drive will not power up. i repalced the board with a donor part no 2061-70144-700 and the drive spins up, takes about 15 seconds and then reports on ready.

when i launch DE it says drive cant be identified. When using pc3000 after drive is ready it also cant id family.

I am a bit concerned about spending too much time as i am not completely sure of the history of the drive, and not completely sure which board is good anymore from all that has been done so am looking at a fresh start if possible, therefore i want to use the new board that at least makes my drive spin and work from there.

any pointers i should be looking for with this drive, does the smooth chip need to be moved from the original board to the new donor board, ( keep in mind that the smooth chip on the original drive is i believe from the 1st donor board)

as a 2nd question how do u guys normally worj with drives that have been elsewhere, do you charge a set inspection fee whether it canbe done or not or do you qoute on the job with no charge,

thank you

With original board that does not make the drive spin, can you access the drive in kernel mode? My guess is you just need to get ROM transferred. Or else recreated from SA.

As a side note I would call moving the motor control IC silly. Usually when it is burned other things are burned or damaged as well.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Hi thx for reply
Not sure why they did that
The current board seems to be completely dead and unusable so I may need to look at recreating from sa
As I haven't had to do this yet I will need to research it can you provide me pls with a basic guide to this no need for detailed just a quick start is enough
Thankyou

You've got the option on PC3K utility to do it.

Normally we charge only if the drive was opened already before coming in.

if you think you can move smooth chip you should be capable of moving rom chip. If not, copy of rom should be in SA.

I don't think this drive has a discrete ROM chip...

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

hi all

this is a continuation from last week.

i have tried looking for the rom module from Sa to work with, however the issue seems to be that i am simply unable to view any modules from Sa and it keeps on reporting no modules found, i believe this could be as the drive will not id so i may be choosing the wrong family to work with, so as i could not find the exact family i posted here and was told it is the hulk family and i still could not access the Sa with the hulk settings,
i then purchased another wd5000aacs and tested the family of hulk and was able to access all modules on the donor correctly, si when i went back to the patient drive and tested with hulk i still get no modules showing at all from SA.

My question is could i possibly be looking at head damage now, the original donor board had a smooth chip physically blown so it is possiblr that maybe the drive has suffered some damage

any ideas on this one

thank you in advance

You should do a HOT-SWAP from another drive (same family) , and read SA . When you read the SA, you'll find there ROM, because it is a Royal-family .

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Angel Data Recovery

Salvation Data's HDD Doctor works with the Royal drives.
See the below note from their web site:

2009-2-13
The new version HD Doctor Suite for Windows (USB):

Western Digital utility ver. 3.40
1. New feature: ROM content automatic recovery for WD ROYL has been appended.
This feature is critical as it is well-known that the ROM of WD ROYL series HDD contains unique adaptive parameters, thus users can not replace the native PCB (or ROM) with another for data recovery in case the native PCB (or ROM) is damaged or lost. With this new appended feature, it is enough just to place any PCB (or ROM) of the same family to HDA and choose "ROM Rebuild"; HD Doctor will synthesize native ROM content from the SA information stored on the platter and overwrite the donor one in automatic mode.
The main difference between our technology and our competitor is that: they synthesize ROM content by using donor firmware backup because they can't access the native SA when the drive is working with donor PCB; our technology allows users to access the SA in slow-read mode, so we can use the native SA information to synthesize native ROM content, thus users do not need to own a donor copy of firmware. This makes difference of success and failure in case you don't have a donor.
Please also check the "ROM content automatic recovery for WD ROYL" for more details.

Thank you for the info DRNJ

have you tried this using WD doctor,

I am happy to spend on tools that work, but looking at forums here over a while i always see mixed posts about tools from salvation, and would like to know of peoples experiences with this tool and these drives.

Thank you for the feedback and input

I don't see why the salvation tool would work in your case if the ACE tool does not.

Dead preamp is a possibility, though I would expect to hear clicking.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.