Hi Gurus!!!

I got a WD500AAKS with a burnt SMOOTH chip. I swap the PCB and it will power on and spin. I'm trying to do the ROM thing with the SD but I can't get to the FW or read ROM at all. I can read the head map but that's about it... PCB is the same REV#. Head map shows different result... Damaged Drive: Primary surface: 1 - Head: 2 & 5, Donor Drive, Primary Surface: 6 - Head: 2 3 4 5 . The donor drive is detecting it as a 500GB drive.

What else could this be????

Do you have the latest version of WD dr?
Supposedly they can reprogram rom from sa ( I haven't tried yet)
if you have latest version . try slow read on the drive management
page .
But if you still can't read the rom, I would suggest swapping the smooth chip
if you feel your soldering skills are up to it .
WD DR still has bugs and flaws when working with newer wd drives .
Myself and a few others have screaming for a fix for months.
But if you can't read the rom correctly, by all means don't write to it.

Thanks Steve,

Yes V3.42. I'll try another PCB in a few hours, just in case...
I was going to use that new feature with the HD DR for WD but so far it's not working for this one.
Tried the slow read on the drive management but no luck. I tried to load from the file but all I get is "0X0"
Do you think the different primary surface and headmap have something to do with????

Putting a good SMOOTH on the burnt PCB???? (I'm not good with my hands so I'm using the air station...)

The problem is WD DR .. if it isn't showing you what you expect to
see, don't write to the drive with it.

This drive has internal rom , and without a trustworthy tool
to mod the rom I wouldn't attempt it.

Practice on an old board till you feel confident,
then swap the smooth to the burnt pcb ( if everything else works on it)