www.deadharddrive.com

[technophreak2000]

On exactly 5/9/08 I became the proud owner of an enclosed external hard drive at Ebay for $90.
It had 500GB of total storage. It was a “500GB EXTERNAL Ultra SLIM USB 2.0 HARD DRIVE Sata/IDE” to be more precise. It had a decent appearance and it worked fine. Below is how the enclosure looks like exactly.



I used it to store so much information such as music, pictures, and softwares. As time passed, I decided to open the enclosure case because I wanted to switch the drives inside into another drive I wanted to examine in my computer. When I took the hard drive out of the case, I noticed it had Platinum brand hard drive all along. Yeah I asked myself the same thing. Never heard of it! Anyhow I continued using this hard drive since it never gave me any problems.

Everything went well up until the unfortunate day of May 25, 2010 came along. I woke up in a hurry to go to work, and then I remembered that the night before I have upgraded one of my image editing computer to windows 7. So I decided to grab my external hard drive quick and connect it to the computer so that I could transfer the files back to the new OS and have no complaints to me while I was at work about files not being there and such things.

When I connected the adapter of my hard drive to the wall, I heard something go “pop!” And I was like, huh? What the?! Probably the outlet messed up. So I connected the adapter to another “working” outlet and I noticed that the light that would normally turn on whenever I plugged in the adapter was not lighting up at all. So I came to think that it was the adapter problem. After that I went to work not knowing of the horrid truth behind that occurrence.

Once I got home from my long day at work, I decided to examine my hard drive closer. I connected it to my computer to at least take out any files that I needed from there. When I connected it did not even power on! Gasp! No sign of any life in my hard drive, oh no! I… I… I got a d-d-d-dead hard drive. It was so sad for me because I have recently graduated (may 8 2010) from my University and kept many of my pictures right there. Not only that, I had so many dollars of software in there and all of my music!

I’ve had hard drives die on me before, that is hard drives in desktops, but I never bothered getting that data back from those because I usually back up data contained in Desktop computers. But this time, it was different. The data of this drive had so much importance to me, so I researched what to do. First off, I had to trouble shoot and find out what caused my hard drive to stop working. I saw many recommendations such as freezing the hard drive or shaking it to make the needles move. When I tossed my hard drive in a Frisbee sort of motion (without releasing it though!) I noticed that the drive would spin just fine. It made vwooooOooM sort of low whistling sound whenever I did that. There was no sign of broken stuff inside of the disk. So I came to conclude that it was the PCB board.

I investigated my Hard Drive model, which was PWD5000YS. I found no useful information over this hard drive model, If you don’t believe me, look it up at Google. Then I decided to check out the brand “Platinum”. The closest thing I found to the brand is this site: www.platinumhdd.com but there they offered no customer service or support. I became extremely frustrated and nervous. I thought to myself, “Oh no! I got a counterfeit hard drive! There’s no way I’ll be able to recover my information!!” It was a really depressing time for me.



I decided to get as much of information from my hard drive as possible that way I could find out the truth behind it. I looked at the PCB board, and there I found a revision number. Surprisingly my revision number gave me a lot a results!! Not only that, I found out that my hard drive truly was a Western Digital not Platinum brand! That was a relief for me, but now what?



I went to my local Ace hardware store and luckily found some torx screws there. I removed the PCB board after having bought those tools, and I noticed that one of those chips was obviously burned out. It literally had a hole on it and some of its soldered wires attached to the board melted off. Aha! So it’s a pcb problem!



This is the culprit!


I found out that I could try doing a PCB board swap to my hard drive, just like Nev (this website’s administrator) did to his hard drive. However, I noticed that he said that he got his hard drive’s pcb not so late from the date it was manufactured, meaning that he had a high chance of the new pcb board’s firmware being compatible with the hard drive. My hard drive I got it two years ago, so like many people would say, finding a matching firmware for it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Aww.

When I checked my revision number of my Pcb, I came across user sunnydreamspace’s website at Google. At that time I didn’t know he was a member of the deadharddrive.com forums. Anyhow, I got his email and asked him for some advice of how I should approach my pcb board’s situation. He responded to my emails promptly, he’s pretty cool. According to him, the most effective way to approach this is by swapping the bios rom chip from my older board to the newer board. He also recommended using a hot air gun to remove the chip. Since I live in a smaller valley, I find found no one who would carry such equipment for soldering. Yikes! So… that would be another investment for the recovery of my data! I found an extremely useful seller at ebay, cmlsupply. He is a seller located in the US and sells high quality products. He cut me some pretty good deals. From him, I bought the hot air gun plus some tweezers, he also responded to my questions promptly. From sunnydreamspace I bought the PCB board to my hard drive.

After nearly 2 weeks, I received all of my stuff.

Sunday, June 6, 2010, was the big day.
I was extremely nervous because I never used a hot air gun for working on Pcb boards. Anyhow, I followed sunnydreamspace’s video by practicing moving chips from pcbs (pcbs I have no use for) and reassembling them back with the hot air gun.
After that I set for the real stuff.
I prepared the hot air gun, had the pcb boards sitting side by side on the grill (the grill because that’s the only thing I could’ve thought of that wouldn’t catch on fire because of the air gun), and tweezers. I was also outside (outside to not trap lead fumes indoors) with a mask on (it’s never a bad thing to be too safe!). Everything seems to be ready to go, let’s rock!

I swapped the bios rom chip from my older board to the newer one. It seems the chips got soldered pretty good. Now, the moment of truth, will this make my hard drive work, or would it be possible that there’s something else to my hard drive’s problem? I put the new pcb board into my hard drive, and then I connected my hard drive to my computer. I turned on the computer and crossed my fingers. And boom! My hard drive was recognized! Windows 7 booted, and my hard drive was still recognized. Right away I connected my new external hard drive and copied everything to it.

Woohoo! Nothing, and I repeat, nothing was lost! I am very grateful to everybody who has helped me in these difficult times! It all seemed impossible because of the bogus brand of my hard drive, but in the end there was hope! It’s a good thing I didn’t give up. And for anyone found in a situation similar to mine, don’t give up!

I spent a total of $240 on everything (pcb board, hot air gun, and tweezers), and I gotta say it was worth every penny.

Thanks for reading my post and I hope you find it more informative than lengthy!
Thanks!

[sunnydreamspace]

hi,
glad to heard your story. good job!
but "When I tossed my hard drive in a Frisbee sort of motion (without releasing it though!)" be careful with this way. sometime it will make your hard drive worse(head crash) that cost more high for data recovery. before this action had to think over and over.


Keep back up your data. have nice day.
_________________
provide Hard drive PCB,entire drive/ Data Recovery service.... big HDD resource. talk to me immediately! sunnydreamspace@hotmail.com
skype: sunnydreamspace

[nev]

Awesome story!
Thanks for adding it!

[technophreak2000]

[technophreak2000]

[kendal]

Keep back up your data. have nice day.

[salvationdata]

really lucky!

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