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dankenstein · Officially active! Joined: 06 Nov 2011 Posts: 4

I have a WD2500SD-01KCCO that just recently stopped working. There was no known power surges and the computer itself is on a brand new UPS. When the computer first boots up, the drive makes one light clicking sound before BIOS POST and the drive does show up as the correct drive in BIOS POST, but when I go to BIOS settings the drive shows only 8000 MB of total capacity even though it is a 250 GB. Later on in the boot sequence the drive shows up as PIO 0MB instead of an ATA type drive. When this drive is connected any disk recovery bootable software (Acronis Disk Director, Norton Parittion Magic, etc) take a lot longer to load, Windows itself takes noticably longer to boot up, and the recovery software I typically use and have always had good results with (R-Studio NTFS) hangs indefinitely upon start up. The disk management service in Windows does not see the drive at all either. The drive only clicks lightly once upon first boot and once again right after POST. It does not sound like it spins up. I am hoping the problem is the result of a controller board issue and I have ordered a WD2500SD-01KCC0 used drive with the last 3 digits of the DCM the same as my drive. I have read a lot about the need to swap U12, a serial EEPROM, on the controller board whilst doing the controller board swap, and am fully prepared to do that as I have the correct equipment and expertise to do it. Can anyone give me confirmation that what I am seeing with this drive is in fact controller board? I am really really hoping it is not a problem with the head or platters as I do not have the resources to send this drive to OnTrack or similar clean room to have the data recovered. Thank you for your help.

harddrivespecialist · Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 2:37 pm Post subject:

Its very unlikely that your PCB has problems, but if you already have a replacement PCB and can perform ROM swap, try it on... It won't hurt.
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dankenstein · Officially active! Joined: 06 Nov 2011 Posts: 4

I forgot to post an update to this thread as I did in other ones. Based on this updated information do you still feel the same about the PCB? If so, could you shed light on why you think that is the case?

Update:
I tried a different SATA port on the motherboard just to try that out, but it made no difference. When the drive is connected while it is first detecting drives it makes 2-3 light clicks, separated by 10 seconds or so. In the drive detection list before going into BIOS settings the drive shows as:

WDC WD2500 08.02D08

When I go into BIOS the drive shows up and when I go into its details in BIOS it shows this:

Extended IDE Drive [Auto]

Access Mode [Auto]
Capacity 8455MB
Cylinder 16383
Head 16
Precomp 0
Landing Zone 16382
Sector 63

Later on it boot it shows the drive as:

CHS, PIO 0, 0 MB

I tried booting to an MHDD boot CD, but it hung upon first booting from the CD and never continued.

My controller board is 2060-701267-001 Rev. A as etched on the board. The replacement drive I have ordered has the exact same PCB model number, but at this point I really need to know if my symptoms suggest a problem with the controller or if there is a problem with the heads and if attempting to replace the controller is a fool's errand. Any advice would be really helpful, as I have to wait until the end of the week before attempting a PCB swap.

EDIT:
My symptoms seem to be similar to these posts:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f16/dead-wd1200bb-114851.html

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic16504.html

I should also note that the computer was left on before this crash occured, I came home and it seemed like the computer had gone through a BSOD type reset, and in My Computer the drive showed up, but trying to access it hung windows and that's when I heard the first clicking sound and shut down. Not sure if a power surge made it through the UPS and PSU to the HDD or if the computer reset was a result of the HDD crashing.

The clicking I do hear sounds like none of the ones here for WD drives:

http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

dankenstein · Officially active! Joined: 06 Nov 2011 Posts: 4

Replaced controller board with and without U12 swap, same story: 10 light clicks and then a louder click, ad infinitum. Guess I'll be looking into professional data recovery.

harddrivespecialist · Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 11:18 pm Post subject:

If you have replaced PCB and did ROM chip swap and your drive acting in same manner, its most likely preamp chip or read/write head failure.
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dankenstein · Officially active! Joined: 06 Nov 2011 Posts: 4

harddrivespecialist · Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2011 4:43 pm Post subject:

If its preamp - possibility of recovery is very high, if heads - depends if there is any damages on a platter/s
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corbingravely · Posted: Fri May 29, 2015 8:28 am Post subject:

This is a possible problem of a disk fragmentation. Your disk is just too fragmented to be found properly. The best thing you can do is to take it to a service center and ask them to defragment it. They have some kind of tools that we do not have to make the HDD de fragmented so as to detect the proper HDD space.

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