Hello everyone,

I have a 500GB Western Digital WD5000YS-01MPB1 (DCM: HCACAJAHB) drive which has failed in the following manner.

I moved the working drive into another machine as a secondary storage drive (old PC was XP to a new Windows 7 machine) and found that access times were very slow. I thought that it was a software (OS) issue due to NTFS permissions or something, however I suppose now that the drive was failing.

As time went on the disk became slower and eventually disappeared from the OS. Upon reboot the drive was missing from BIOS. I disconnected the drive and power cycled the PC, then I reconnected the drive and it was detected by BIOS however pretty much not accessible in the OS. A short while later the drive would not register in BIOS at all. This was also the case when I tried the drive in another computer also. The drive sounds normal and no clicking is heard.

I have another identical drive which I used to attempt to swap the PCB board with a known working one however if I swap the PCB boards around, both of the drives will be found in BIOS. Both cause the machine not to boot at the same place. I thought that was a bit strange myself, but what would I know.

I was hoping that I might be able to get some oppinions here about the issue and where I stand as someone without skills/resources. I was also hoping that having an identical drive at my disposal might help me somehow.


Thanks in advance,
Mark (Auckland, New Zealand)

Swapping PCB with an identical donor will not help because information specific to the drive is contained in ROM. Special tools/skills required for this repair: best left to professionals. That, of course, assumes that PCB is the issue. There are other alternative answers, all beyond scope of end user.

Ah, I see, thank you for explaining the PCB swap issue.

Is it possible to have a Data Recovery centre diagnose a PCB issue without having to open up the drive? (In this way I could evaluate if the drive is worth saving at a lower cost I presume)

PCB diagnostics does not involve opening the drive.

Also, heads can be checked without opening the drive.

Any decent DR firm can diagnose the fault without opening.

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http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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you may got head or firmware problem i think.

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Thank you for the information... I have decided to RMA the drive as it is still under warranty.

I appriciate the multiple Private messages offering assistance, however one of the suggestions by 'Headcrash' seemed wrong.



There are pleny of Hard Drive Recovery firms in New Zealand, if I followed this person advice I would have to send my drive away internationally. Perhaps he meant this person able to help at lower cost and does not work in a firm... either way it seems like bad information.

I'm sure he meant closest out of people who are known on the forum.

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

so much for 'private message'