Hi there, I've been reading this forum all day re an issue i'm having with the above WD HDD. It's symptoms are similar to a TVS issue, but my HDD is still spinning (or at least has warmth and a spinning type vibration when power is running through it) so I decided to ask for your help.

It dissapeared during the night from Windows, it's intermittent to show up in BIOS, when it does it causes Windows7 to take 30 minutes to boot, and then Windows to behave slowly when loaded. The HDD shows up and the free space and used space shows, i can access the root of the drive and see the folder structure. But when I go any further it's not possible to get access to any data, nor can I copy any data off it, then it eventually dissapears from Windows explorer. It is getting worse the more I try and access it.

I need the data off the drive, no questions. It will cost me more in client fee's than to recover it professionally, but I will test the TVS' to see if they are at fault and remove them if so to recover the data. Is there anything else that could be causing this?

Thank you in advance!

John.

Its not the TVS. Send it to a pro if the data is important before you do more damage.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Any recommendations?
it's not the TVS you're right, continuity tests show them as fine.

Then you should stop now and go ahead and let a pro take care of it. The more you continue to do stuff to it the more expensive it will be.

In your neck of the woods check out Sean at pcimage (he is a regular poster here on the forums).

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

Thanks a lot for the quick replies and advice people.

Than ks mate but I thought I should send it to a pro before I made it worse. The data that is on there is very important, and loosing it could cost me a lot of money.

It is so refreshing to finally see someone take
the "take it to a pro" advice, instead of accusing
everyone of being greedy bastards.

Well Done

Let's say exactly how things are: in this case data is important and the eventual loss will lead to great profit loss or troubles. Normally, the 'data' is not important - if not only porn and warez and downloaded movies and MP3...

Glad to say the pro advice paid off..... 99.99999% of data recovered

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

bad sectors?

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Zero Alpha: zeroalpha.com.au
Find Cheap Donor Drives App: https://www.zeroalpha.com.au/donor-drive-app Updated February 2026

Yeah, essentially.

Used Deepspar which had to reset and power off/on the drive many times to get a decent image. On some of the bads, the drive locked up completely and had to be power reset.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

has this drive been passed onto a pro. I thought I would share my experience about a number of WD5000AAKS drives I've seen in.

Symptoms:
Spins up OK, can read the firmware fine. When I view a sector it is ok, if I then try to a view a sector shortly after that (any value) the drive spins down then up again quickly. Essentially I can only copy one sector at a time!

This was resolved by saving the ROM content, then uploading it into a matching donor PCB. After this it was possible to extract all the data OK. From this it suggests there is some kind of very subtle PCB failure.

Any one else had such an experience with a WD5000AAKS. I have seen it on both ??TMA0 and ??YGA0 drives.

John

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CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

Hi. I have the exact same hard drive and the same problems. I got my data off the hard drive after sending it to someone. When i boot using windows vista it doesnt seem to get past the loading screen while the hdd is plugged in. is there any way to fix it?

Yes, I have seen it many many times. On those models and more.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Ive never seen this. I feel a little left out

Ahh, bless!

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!