I found an identical drive on Ebay with the same part number (9W2844-301) and firmware version (3.01).

I verified that the new drive was operational and then swapped the electronic cards between drives. I then connected the original drive to the PC but the system ignores the drive when it is powered up. I've noticed that the defective unit seems to be locking up the Data Buss as long as it is powered, removing power from the HDD allows the PC to continue normal operation. By the way, I'm running the drive in an external HDD USB 2 Housing; would it be better to move it to one of the internal IDE ports for troubleshooting purposes ?

This is my first attempt at restoring an HDD but I have worked in electronics for the past 30 years and I am not a novice when it comes to handling and working with printed circuit boards and associated hardware.

There is a lot of valueable data on this drive that I would like to recover and yes, I was stupid and didn't back it up; there just doesn't seem to be enough time when it's working. I would appreciate an assessment as to how I should proceed or if I should proceed at all ?

1. Why did you assume the PCB was bad?

2. What are the original symptoms? Dead, clicking?

3. If the data is that valuable, then why try DIY and risk losing everything?
some-real-world-diy-results-t12830.html?hilit=diy

4. With respect, you've probably gone as far as you can go without specialist equipment. Time to take to a pro on this occasion.

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There is no real indication of a problem except for the system's inability to recognize the drive and read any data on the drive, no mechanical sounds but this drive is abnormally quiet. There are only two components that could be causing this, the electronics board or the mechanical drive itself, I was simply eliminating one of the components. The used drive from EBay was a lot cheaper than a DR Service, if it had worked.

I was using this drive for secondary data storage so the operating system was not effected by the failure. The bootup process had been getting very slow for the last couple of weeks so I did a Defrag of the Primary drive last weekend to see if this would resolve that problem. The secondary drive became erratic about the same time but was still functioning. The system finally failed to recognize the drive at all. After replacing the defective drive, the boot process is accomplished very quickly.

I have pretty much come to the same conclusion that you are proposing, without a specialized testing interface and specific testing software I'm just wasting my time. The Mechanical - Electrical interface in these drives is far more complex that I originally assumed.

Can you tell if the drive is actually spinning when you apply power to it?

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PC Image Data Recovery
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Not really, I took the outside metal cover off last night thinking the platters were in a sealed compartment, I was surprised to see the actual platters and read/write head assembly under the cover. I immediately reinstalled the cover to minimize contamination. I can't tell if the drive is rotating by listening our touching it so i'll pull the cover again and verify visually, I'll let you know what I find !

pcimage,

Well I removed the cover and powered up the drive and the disk is spinning. The Read/Write Head made some small position changes and returned to it's resting place near the center hub. The Red (Read)/Green (Not Read) LED on the external HDD USB housing stays Red continuously as long as the drive is powered. The Windows USB device screen ICON comes on when I power up the external drive but the Plug 'N Play utility is never able to identify the drive and assign a screen drive Icon.

A plastic arm, from the Read/Write Head assembly extends out over the platter but does not track the heads movement. When I lightly touched this arm, the Read/Write Head positioned itself to the extreme outside edge of the platter and then jogged around the platter like it was trying to locate a specific location. The Red (Read)/Green (Not Read) LED on the external HDD USB housing actually turned Green for short periods which gave me some temporary, though short lived, encouragement that data was being acquired. I hope this holds some positive meaning for you, awaiting your reply !

this case is closed.

Bye bye data....

If you think that now it is working, what do you need? Connect the drive and get data... If you can

Why does everybody assume that taking their hard drive to a professional lab is always going to be expensive? He could of at least taken it to a few places for free diagnosis and quote.

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

Free diagnose and quote will end too. Guess why?

Its been opened?

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

You've just turned what was quite possibly a $100-$200 job into a $2000+ (if at all possible) case.

When will people learn? What on earth are people looking for inside the drive, and what possibly could they hope to acheive?

Like N.C. says "bye bye data".

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

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

-> rltmt "Well I removed the cover and powered up the drive and the disk is spinning."

I actually find it quite insulting that you (as a layman, with no data recovery experience whatsoever) believe you could solve anything by opening your drive.

Do you think that data recovery engineering is learned overnight? That it's easy?

There's a reason we charge what we do for the work we do - it's down to years of research, experience, skill and technical expertise.

In one sentence, you have trashed the due respect that most DR engineers are worthy of.


Duncan Clarke
Retrodata

Probably a dead janitor or so...

_________________
Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

In the last 30 years some water has passed under bridges...



Probably there still IS, with some more attempt I'm sure there WAS.