www.deadharddrive.com

[busywl]

previous post: When powered up the drive spins slightly, PCB is hot to the touch right near the center circle part like the motor control chip is burned out. Bad external case shorted it out I think, the drive, motor & data should be ok.

MDL: wd2500BB-22GUA0 (250gb - 230 gigs of data on it)
DATE: 11 Jan 2005
DCM: HSCHCTJAH
PCB # - 2061-001266-200 AF (sticker)
PCB # - 2060-001266-001 rev A (on the board itself)

Need a pcb to swap with. Will compensate.


Happy Happy Joy Joy:

I opened all the external drives I have that were pre-assembled and it turns out one of the externals I have had was the same model drive and more importantly matching numbers on the pcb sticker. I order a torx set of ebay ($14 shipped) and broke out the size t7 to unscrew the pcb's off both drives. After the swap I powered up the drive and it worked. All the data was there and I was ready to copy it all to the blank drive.

I retrieved all the data on the drive, over 238GB minus a 250mb episode of tv I won't miss. The drive couldn't read it. Needless to say I'm a happy kid. The pcb swap was simple and I could clearly see the motor control chip burned out on the pcb board. That's where the smell was coming from.

I did the copying with 2 external usb set ups and copied the data to a fresh drive in under 2 1/2 hours. After the copy session (and a few episodes of Angel) I replaced the pcbs to the proper drives and everything is fine. The drive with the bad pcb is ready for more action but without a pcb it's a paper weight

It's a shame I can't replace the bad chip because the drive itself is in great shape. Anyone have any ideas? How would I find someone with a dead similar drive that died from motor problems instead of pcb problems?

By the way these model WD drives are sold a lot on 3btech.com and pcdirect.com so if anyone has a similar drive you should try calling them and see if they have a matching drive number.

Glad a site like this is out there, I linked it up on my website! All that data would have been lost and that would have sucked. Thanks for the tutorial and pictures. Really helped!
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thanks!


-busywl