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airwrecktion

hi all. I have a hdd that died on me.. freak power supply accident.
I'll tell yall the story.

I wanted to upgrade my cpu, so i bought a faster one. Problem is, it required lots of power to run it. So i bought a cheap 480w power supply. BIG MISTAKE on my part.. i installed it fired up the computer.. it ran for a second.. then all of a sudden.. the computer starting turning on and off rapidly . I panicced and hit the power button. ofmg.

For a while i couldnt get it to work... i bought a new motherboard, .. .well i bought 3 motherboards actually. 1 of them was a brand new albatron blah blha blha it was nice. i ebayed 2, both ecs motherbaords. 1 of them k7s5a, the same mobo i've always had and some other one ls7vmm or something. I also bought a new "DEMON Black Chrome" 580w power supply ..

Well one day.. a friend of mine whom i havent spoken to in forever suggested i turn off POWER MANAGEMENT in the bios. i did so, and the computer booted up just fine. Problem is... my western Digital caviar wd300bb 00dea0 30.0 gb hdd wasnt being recognized.. it hit me.. it wasnt being read. I noticed it wasnt even spinning upon power up. On the other hand, my 160gb seagate had survived. -thank god.

Well now... im trying to save my 30.0gb hdd, it had 6 years of music on that thing. the kind of music that you listen to and you reminesce of those days when..

From my story, does it sound like a fried my logic board with that cheap powr supply rapidly turning off and on the power? The hdd worked flawlessly prior the incident. It made no funny noises, it was quiet, and it never "lagged" when i clicked on "my computer."

any thoughts/comments are welcomed.

nev · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Posts: 23

Sounds like you've got a good chance of it working.
First thing to do is have a careful look at your logic board to see if there are any blackened chips. Even if not, a logic board swap is worth a try considering the circumstances.

airwrecktion · Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 8:26 pm Post subject:

I swapped logic boards with another hdd of the same exact model. To my surprise, the HDD actually spins up now. Great!! I am thrilled, but i soon discover another problem.

The bios does not detect a primary slave. But under the setup, The bios detects the hdd as a 8455 mb hdd. My motherboard is an ECS k7s5a revision 3.1. The hdd is a western digital 30 gig [ WD300bb-75dea0 ] . I did some research, but could not understand the results that came up.

My main hdd i boot off now is a 160 gb seagate. I have a bios that does support hdd's larger than 137 gb.

I checked the ata/ide cables over and over, they're all good. I have the hdd jumper in the cable select spot. I even switched it around between slave and cable selecta few times but still got nothing.

What could the problem be?

airwrecktion · Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 12:35 am Post subject:

HAH~!!! i did it. The problem in my previous post was..

Well first off, i downloaded the western digital "lifeguard" or somethignl ik ethat hdd utility. It identified the newly installed logic board as a wd400bb. Wtf thats not right....

Today i received my hdd. I swapped logic boards. OMFG it worked. I am so leet. I have all my music again. I am so happy. I skipped out on steak, to fix my hdd. But now.. i will have both! iw ill feast in honor of my recovering all my data.

danielbu · Guest

Hi, I also have a WD400 that has quit.

Almost $200 has got us up and running again, but no data from the old disk. Family photos, etc. The kind of thing that you don't have time for but can't live without.

I don't really understand your success story, but it sounds relevant. Today I'll try to hook the disk up as a slave on the new system, and see what happens with WD data lifeguard tools. After that, I'll try freezing it.

Everywhere else I have looked says NEVER swap disk logic boards on WD drives - and this one looks like it has a million different soldered on connections. WTF?

I have deadlines and shit - I don't need this emotional wrecking ball right now!

techguy_877 · Active contributor Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 8

danielbu

I know from hands on experience it is possible to swap a WD hard drive controller board. While my HD model number is different from yours, my success story is at:

http://www.deadharddrive.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=60

I recovered all the data off the dead hard drive without the huge expense of a recovery service.

techguy_877

keylow · Deadharddrive regular Joined: 11 Jul 2006 Posts: 22

I have had drives die like this several and so far (knock on wood) I have been able to recover that which was lost.

Now it has happened again.

I have a dead wd400-00dea0 (40Gb) and an IBM 82Gb Deskstar.

Any help in finding PCBs for these would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks,