I have a WQD2500JD SATA drive that just clicks, and neither the BIOS or the operating system recognize it. Does the clicking mean that there was a head crash? I've seen the circuit boards for these drives advertised on Ebay for about $60.00 apiece; I got the drive for free, I'm just wondering if it's even worth putting $60.00 into this drive, because I can get a 1 TB hard drive for about $120.00 at Best Buy. My downfall is that I like to fix things, even if it makes no sense financially! Any thoughts?
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
I hate to say it, but:
That's a 250GB, right? You can get new ones for less than the parts to fix it. If you tried to fix it, it still might not work, and you'd be out the money. Throw it out and buy new. I've had good luck with Samsung drives:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...7&name=SAMSUNG
Look, you can get a 500GB Samsung for $59.99 with free shipping. The choice is obvious.
Edit: Bestbuy sucks.
A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. -
Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
clicking = mechanical damage.
i've got a WD2000BB 200GB drive that clicks all the time.. try to remove the PCB and test it (connect it to SATA and power and see if the BIOS recognizes it).
if so, sell it (edit: the PCB) on ebay as its most likely OK.
the drive itself is not worth repairing.
but someone may need the electronics...
i am actually searching for the PCB of a Hitachi Deskstar 120GXP or 180GXP (2MB or 8MB Cache) with the model "IC35L120AVV207-0" (120GB IDE).
the drive itself is working, but i accidentially ripped 2 pins out of the IDE connector (caused by a very hard-fitting IDE cable).
i cant repair it because the solder pads are ripped off the PCB
only reason i didnt trash it is that there is data on it from back in 2004 that i want to backup... photos of "the good old days" and stuff like that :/Last edited by Scenic; 10-30-2008, 12:41 PM.
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
Never use a drive you swap PCB's on
The defective sectors list is on the firmware...
So the drive will be unreliable
After recovery throw away..."The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it."Comment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
With clicking it's probably trashed but try this.
I've run killdisk on drives the WD's diagnostic program said were dead.
Told program to write zeros to entire drive.
Some times the drives I tried that on suddenly work fine again.
Done that with ~5 WD's and got two of them back.
One has been in use for 2+ years since and the other about 6 months.
No further problems with either of them.
.Mann-Made Global Warming.
- We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.
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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
- Dr Seuss
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You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
Use (solder in) a short piece of wire from trace past the pad to the pin.Originally posted by Scenici cant repair it because the solder pads are ripped off the PCBMann-Made Global Warming.
- We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.
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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
- Dr Seuss
-
You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
I don't really have any experience in repairing hard drives, but I've read a few articles and the clicking noises can be produced by either head damage or buffer/firmware corruption. Most of the time it's just buffer/firware corruption and it can be easily repaired with a new PCB (make sure the size [GB] of the drive and the firmware versions match). But $60 is a little too much (I can get a 1TB HD in Micro Center for that price). You should be albe to find that PCB for less $$$ if you look harder. The best way is probably to buy the same exact HD and just swap the PCBs.
If you can't find a cheaper PCB (or drive), just wait untill you find one that's cheap.
Personally, I hate to throw things away so I just store them somewhere untill I find the right parts to fix them or use them for scrap.
Couldn't agree more.Originally posted by acstechComment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
can have a read of this forum also, quite interesting http://hddguru.com/
http://forum.hddguru.com/noise-relat...ion-t7986.html
murphys law says its probably mechanical damage though.....Last edited by willawake; 10-31-2008, 02:29 AM.Comment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
here's a pic...Originally posted by Big Pope
some idiot had placed a warranty/part number sticker right over the breathing hole (from that shop which sold it back then).
i removed it (i didn't care about the shop's warranty, because i had no bill of that drive anyways), but i cant get the sticky stuff off there (i've got some sticker removal liquid, but that would remove the text of the hdd label, too )
http://bambooz.pytalhost.net/badcaps...tar_180gxp.jpg
the only difference between the PCB of the Deskstar 120GXP and the 180GXP is the cache (120GXP = 2MB and 180GXP = 8MB)Last edited by Scenic; 10-31-2008, 09:29 AM.Comment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
>i've got a WD2000BB 200GB drive that clicks all the time.. try to remove the PCB and test it (connect it to SATA and power and see if the BIOS recognizes it).
that means firmware is not on platters themselves, as it is on maxtor crap, which after damage cannot say what model it is...
good thing.
some say freezing the faulty drive may help.
input "freezing the hdd" to google and see what you can find.
for example
http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/200...over-data.htmlLast edited by i4004; 10-31-2008, 10:06 AM.Comment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
Vent is clearly marked 'do not cover' for an important reason.
Your drive is NG, but that's not to say there's no chance of getting it to spin one more time and if lucky getting some of the data.
The vsticker over the hole means that the drive was being damaged every time it was used, not a good thing.JimComment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
huh...?!
that drive in the picture is not the clicking 200GB WD.. (i already dumped it a year ago).
the pic shows the 120GB Hitachi with the accidentially ripped out IDE pins (caused by an extremely hard-fitting junk ide cable)..
it spins up, makes its usual testing, and then idles. doesn't get recognized anymore because of the missing pins. i tried to rewire them, but without luck (lots of SMD and through-hole stuff on this PCB...)
only thing i know is that the mechanics are OK
(was working fine before the accident with those IDE pins..)
tell that to the idiot who put the sticker on there at the shop the HDD was bought from.. lolOriginally posted by arneson
Last edited by Scenic; 10-31-2008, 11:13 AM.Comment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
The vent hole cannot be blocked.
That's why I posted how important it is.
When your drive spins up with no air cushion under the heads, you have a big problem, but bigger problem with missing connection pins.
If it was my drive I'd put it in a shell enclosure with wire connections soldered permanently onto control circuit.JimComment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
>When your drive spins up with no air cushion under the heads
who stole the air cushion?
who produced vacum there, and exactly how did this happen?Comment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
The breather hole is made so that when the drive starts heating up (mostly due to the high speed rotation of the platters), the expanding air inside the HD can escape. Otherwise the air pressure increases due to the heat, which in turn increases the temperature even further.
Now, the Deskstar GXP series have glass platters, which are acutally a lot more tolerant to heat. The problem is with the bearings and the heads. High temperature can greatly shorten the life of the ball bearings on the motor. Also, at very high temps, heads start to stick to the platters. Generally, you don't want you HD to exceed 50 degrees Celsius.Comment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
sure, but that won't evacuate the air.
it'll just make it warmer.
and probably not warm enough to cause undesirable effects on it's operation.
i mean, it's drive from 2003 which still works(removed pins aside).
also, we don't really know how air-tight the sticker was. probably not fully, so air was probably escaping from the hdd anyway.
offcourse, i'm in no way encourang anyone to cover that hole with anything...better let it breathe.....let it breathe, and also, if you're putting it into too small external trays, make holes, put a fan...
http://picasaweb.google.hr/i4004b3/P...wPenghongComCn#
(is picasa web always working for you?)Last edited by i4004; 10-31-2008, 10:33 PM.Comment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
the heavily filtered breather is so pressure can equalise during temp changes.
otherwise the sealed bearings would leak their lube inside or outside depending on whether you cool or heat.
both are bad for obvious reasons.Comment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
I agree with PCBONEZ: clicking noise is mostly related to mechanical damage (unstable platter or broken head[s]: remember the "Click of death" for old Iomega Zip units, IBM "Deathstars" or Maxtors manifactured up to 2007?) or difficulties in reading. In the latter a small part of the platter may be so damaged the head can't read reliably it: solution is force manual remapping of those damaged sectors by zero filling the disk (as Pcbonez proposed; some manifacturers name it "low level formatting", but it isn't a true LLF) or by running another diagnostic.
I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 in my external box: it recently developed some bad sectors in a very small area (roughly from sector 438300000 to 438800000: half a million sectors or about 240 MB), maybe due to a head crash. The Seagate diagnostic, Seatools, refused to fix them without a zero filling and, while I could lose the partition with bad sectors (I store in it temporary files, virtual machines, distro images: something I can easily recreate or download again), I didn't want to erase the whole drive: I run MHDD's (from hddguru.com, but it's included in UBCD too) SCAN command with Remapping set as ON and it remapped them.
ZandraxHave an happy life.Comment
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Re: Is it difficult to repair Western Digital hard drives?
A good point about how much metal expands and contracts with very little heat, in machine tool our project is a tap index plate. We are surface grinding it now. We clean off the surface with a special block and wash it down before using it. We also dress the wheel to make it flat with the surface. If you start surface grinding, then touch your piece, the heat from your hand with cause it to expand and contract very little, but its enough to change the high and low spots in your piece and ruin it. Now, we move the grinding wheel down 1/2000 of a inch at a time. The head on a hard drive is even closer than that. So a very small change in heat on the platter can cause the head to hit the surface. The air cusion does exactly what it sounds like, keeps a microscopic layer of air underneath the head to keep it from hitting the platters.
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