Hi,

I've just found my old, broken WD400BB hard drive and thought I'd give it a try.

The hard drive spins up, gets recognised by the bios and the operating system but sadly that's all it does. When trying to read data from the device in Linux I wound up with about 40GBs of zeros (there is something else at the start of the file, I can't make out what it is, though).


Here's what happens when I plug the hard drive into an usb enclosure:


Afterwards I hooked it up to an IDE port of another machine and gave MHDD a run. S.M.A.R.T. isn't working and MHDD generates "S" errors only. I've attached 3 pictures of the bios and MHDD recognising the hard drive. I also attached a picture of the errors shown in MHDD.



Additionally I recorded the sounds my hard drive is making when starting, trying to read something and stopping. The sounds coming from the hard drive when reading is most noticeable when reading lower sectors and gets more and more quiet when reading higher sectors.


I'm new to all this hard drive repairing stuff and to this forum and just trying to provide you with as much information I can get. Can you make any useful assumptions out of this? The MHDD FAQ says, that in case MHDD reports 100% bad blocks "it is either a head crash, pcb damage or firmware issue".

Probably translator problem, U need pro help.
"no user servicable parts inside"

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

It's a PCB and Translator problem I think.

The drive not recognized correctly.

replace PCB and free HDD_Repair software may solve your problem

Good luck

I wouldn't think it's a PCB probem at ll, it's almost certainly a translator issue like pepe says IMHO.

Doubtfull HDD_Repair would be able to fix this, use this at your peril.

If you just want to repair the drive then by all means give it a whirl, but if you need the data then do not attempt the repair yourself.

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First of all thank you for your advice so far.

It'd be cool to get data off of the hard drive, but honestly I don't even know what's on it anymore.

Data recovery is expensive, but exploring files dating back 8 years would be cool. It's kind of like a time capsule

So let's try something harmless first: Just in case the assumption that the PCB is faulty is true the PCB of my hard drive should not work in another hard drive and show similar problems, right? If yes: Which components of the PCB do I have to switch? My guess is the U2 chip, a picture of the same PCB layout I have is in this thread: wtb-wd400bb-hard-drive-for-head-swap-t13564.html?hilit=wd400bb%20swap#p90678

Where can I find this HDD_Repair tool? And is there a manual available? Google didn't provide me with any useful search results.

http://files.hddguru.com/download/Softw ... pair.v2.0/

Good luck

Have you had a quote?

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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

how do you read those GB ? using a raw dd dump ?
because I got I/O errors on my WD400 see :

http://rzr.online.fr/q/ata

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Duplicated post, sorry.