The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Spindle? Look, all I know is the platters continue to run, even when windows loses the drive. The drive is no louder than any other. I guess we'll find out soon enough. Because I don't see the harm in swapping the controller boards, provided they look extremely similar. I'm gonna nitpick the hell out of it LOL!
Russ, I apologize about the high resolution. When I get pics, that's the first thing I'm interested in knowing. It's resolution. That's the most important factor to me, when finding imagery on the web. I gave it to you large, so you could zoom in, without losing too much quality

 

Omega, if you have the drive out of its bay and just have live power running to it take and mildly shift the drive from level, tip it side to side, and if the drive resists, gyro effect, you'll know the spindle motor is working. However it could be spinning but be below the acceptable margin of 7200 rpm and still be bad so there should be good resistance when tipping the drive. Don't get carried away though, no sudden moves. You may want to try it with a good drive first just to get the feel of the resistance.

Russ, I have a father that was into electronics and I've always been good in physics, science, and math so I tinkered with transistor radios, old shortwave tube units and of course the Heath kit stuff too. Even at 7 I was the go to guy when it came to electronics in the neighborhood and since I love music I was also the kid who had the best stereo gear as well. That still holds today even though I haven't got crazy about it lately.

Stevo

 

I pulled the drive out of the sata dock, while it was still spinning. In other words, I shut off the dock, and rapidly removed the drive. To my surprise, the drive tried to jump out of my hands. Is that a good sign? LOL!!!

 

It's normal. Think of all the momentum those spinning platters have. Don't pick up a drive when it's still spinning!

 

That's a good sign! Your drive motor should be good.

 

Damn right! LOL!

 

Well guys...I think I'm gonna throw in the towel. I'm not liking what I'm reading on the following site. Fact of the matter is, the odds of a PCB swap working, are nearly zero. I don't like that figure. And I don't want to risk trashing another drive with odds like those. The firmware is actually located on the Platters! I found that interesting. Can't seem to get a quote for retrieval from them though :S My brothers not gonna like this...
http://www.salvagedata.com/hard-drive/western-digital-data-recovery/wd5000aaks/

 

Oman7,

I don't know if that is BS or not! Rick just recently swapped a controller on a WD 750 without any issue, and I've never read anywhere that the firmware is on the platters. While it's possible, I've never heard of it. I tried to get hold of Rick, but he must be asleep. If I see him come on line, I'll ask him.

Russ

 

They're supposedly professionals. WD recommends them. I suppose it's possible, that they are simply saying those things, to dissuade people. So that they'll spend money on their services

 

I agree with Russ and yes WD would not suggest that the average Joe even touches their drives outside of installing them. In fact they don’t even want professionals’ to touch them unless they are WD certified! They are correct that some of the firmware is stored on the platter(s) in the configuration service area as some of the drive table info is there too, but that doesn't mean your controller board isn't the problem. However It could be that the service area on the platter is corrupt and for your situation the magnetic properties of that area would need to be weak not corrupted as your situation it works and then does not.

I don't blame you if you want to throw in the towel because you can do more damage if you mess around further so that is the safe bet for you. It’s smart to be safe and not sorry if you are at all worried about what you want to tackle.

 

Steve,

You sound like my clone! LOL!! I used to be the go to guy when I was just a little kid. I repaired all the neighbors Radios, TVs, Record players and so on. I opened my first business, a Car Radio repair shop when I was 15. Hybrids had just started coming in then, and most shops hated them (Old school). I don't know why because all you had to do 99% of the time is turn them on, and if the speaker didn't go thump, it needed the power transistors replaced. I rented space in a local garage and I made a pretty good living fixing them. The Old school repairman were afraid of transistors, and used to send me all that kind of work. I learned to repair Tape recorders, 16 and 8mm projectors, and finally started repairing all of the local School's AV equipment. I also made a pretty good living doing it! LOL!! I finally sold the original business in 68, and moved on to Dental and then Medical, among other things! it was a Doctor friend that first got me into NASA! In 80s on Junk night, I used to hunt for VCR boxes, as normally if you found a box for a new one, generally the old one was inside the new one's box. I used to buy the whole belt and drive idler kit for $16 and sell the repaired VCRs for $50 to $75. Nice profit too, and I made a lot of people that couldn't afford a new one very happy! I started building custom computers in the late 80's, 497 to date and with 3 more builds and I'll reach 500! Don't know where all the years went, but they sure have been fun!

Best regards,
Russ

 

I just had a HDD go bad WD sent another one. When it arrived I swapped the controler card on the backs, and recovered all the files on the bad drive . After I had finished I swapped them back, and returned the bad one to WD .. My personal opinion is in most HDD cases it's the card on the back of the HDD , unless you hear or have grinding . Not sayin all cases, but most

 

You had no trouble swapping PCB's? I'm afraid if I remove the good controller, and run the faulty drive with it, that the good drive may not like it's controller anymore :S

 

I had no problem what so ever. Just take out the screws and it lifts right out

Does the card have a hot spot on it ? When I hook up the five volt line the card has a hot spot or smell that tells me it's the card not the drive itself

 

I've removed the board 3 times. Just to see if I missed something. Given some of the information is stored on the platters, there's a slight chance that the problem lyes there. I guess we'll see. I don't think it can do any harm to try it. If it does, I can replace their current HTPC drive with my "Yolanda" terabyte drive. I'm prepared to lose her Kind of...

Yes, there are what appear to be burned marks. I'm skeptical that the burn marks are the problem though. Whatever caused the burn marks however, is another story. We're hopeful, that the two drives are similar enough to allow a card transfusion lol!

I'll be headed over there in an hour or two...

 

Oman7,

That's when you switch it back and play dumb, if you get my drift.

Russ

 

I get your drift LOL! I still have 3+ months warranty on the good AAKS drive.

I tried swapping controllers. To say it had no effect would be untrue. It definitely acted different. The sata dock showed very good activity, but the plates spun down and the drive seemed to disconnect from windows. When the faulty drive has IT'S controller, the plates do not spin down. The firmwares are different too. The temporary controller may not have known what to do with the slightly older drive.

I plan to hold on to the faulty drive, in the hopes that one day, the data can be retrieved. But my brother and his wife have accepted the worst. I'll likely recommend some form of Raid 1 array, so that they can be more content in the future. They've been talking with someone at work, that has a file server serving their entire household needs. I may just have to go one on one with this guy, and see about getting inspired by his ideas. From what I've heard, it sounds similar to what creaky has going. I think Creaky's setup might be a little more complex though.

Thankfully, the good 5000AAKS drive is still good. I put the drive back in the HTPC, and all is well. No troubles whatsoever. And his primary computer is likely gonna get 2 more fans really soon. A hard drive cooling fan, and a new exhaust fan for the rear. It makes a curious vibration noise...

 

Currently have about 3TB of stuff with no backups to speak of :S

I would have more redundancy but my personal media collection is hardly important enough to justify doubling my storage costs. If anything is worth saving I keep a backup on my 500GB External WD MyBook. Everything else I throw caution to the wind. So far never had a drive failed on me but several are basically retired. Both my whisper quiet 320GB Seagate 7200.9s are long gone to other machines as well as a 160GB 7200.10

 

You can setup a raid (whatever) without having a full blown server i.e.,Windows 8 or Windows 2003R2. I've used a media server type PC and you can still setup periodic backups too. You'll want to use the same drive types and select something that isn't going to be obsolete soon. I would suggest a enterprise drive, for Seagate’s they end in NS instead of AS for the models numbers but you can use a desktop drive too, however the manufacture could void warranty on a drive used 24/7 that is intended for a desktop computer. I like RAID 5, 10, or 50 but 1 is probably all you'll need.

 

Same here Jeff. Caution to the wind :S I am trying to create redundancies though. But money is an issue at the moment. Most of my dvd collection is on hard drive and dvd. But a good portion of my dvds haven't been burned yet. I've decided to forgo burning them, and switch to Hard drives exclusively. Hopefully none of them give out before I'm capable of cloning them.

Backups for my brother are his decision. I've given him ideas, and the general cost of said ideas. They know what they need to do. Honestly, Good dvds are the way to go for backing up Pictures. But hard drive redundancy sure is convenient. No burning, and plug and play