[SOLVED] Cooked HDDs

[arkitect]

So I was a victim of the classic wrong-PSU-cable and fried 3 HDDs with different situations:

One 8 year old WD Black with SMOOTH chips burnt out and doesn't appear to be anything else.

One 8 years old WD Black with SMOOTH chip and what appears to be another black thing, maybe a D12 diode? (I don't know how to read circuit boards)

One 1 year old WD Red with what appears to have no damage and no lingering burnt smell like the other two.

Is it safe to assume that just a PCB and firmware swap with www.onepcbsolution.com would save these drives? Or am I better off going to a professional and pay up the big bucks?

For the WD Red, is it still a fried PCB despite not seeing and burnt parts on the board? Is the best bet to still proceed with a cheaper PCB swap service?

Thanks in advance.

 

[RealBeast]

If the data is important enough for the cost, I would suggest not wasting time and money and potentially damaging data with PCB swaps unless you have a lot of experience. I would go with professional data recovery like THESE GUYS and consider it a lesson paid for about solid backup procedures. I'll throw in a quick personal recommendation for BackBlaze.

 

[fzabkar]

Until recently, WD's models have had bad "protection" circuitry. If the 5V TVS diode has been shorted, and if the damage to the SMOOTH chip is on the 5V side rather than the 12V, then the preamp on the headstack will most likely have been damaged as well. This means that a board swap, even with a firmware transfer, will not work. Instead you will be in for an expensive professional recovery.

If you can upload detailed photos of your PCBs, I can tell you whether it will be worth spending money on replacements.

 

[arkitect]

Until recently, WD's models have had bad "protection" circuitry. If the 5V TVS diode has been shorted, and if the damage to the SMOOTH chip is on the 5V side rather than the 12V, then the preamp on the headstack will most likely have been damaged as well. This means that a board swap, even with a firmware transfer, will not work. Instead you will be in for an expensive professional recovery.

If you can upload detailed photos of your PCBs, I can tell you whether it will be worth spending money on replacements.

WD Black 1TB. Looks like SMOOTH area and the small chip to the left of it is burnt.

WD Black 2TB. Looks only only SMOOTH area is burnt.

WD Red 8TB. No visible sign of damage. But drive does not spin up like the rest from the same wrong PSU cable.

 

[fzabkar]

The 1TB and 2TB PCBs have damage to the SMOOTH chip on the 5V side. You will find that D3 is shorted and R67 is open. The preamp is both cases will probably be damaged. Sorry. :-(

As for the 8TB, the prognosis is good, but you have cropped the image in the wrong place, so I can't show you what to do.

 

[arkitect]

What about the 8TB?

 

[arkitect]

The 1TB and 2TB PCBs have damage to the SMOOTH chip on the 5V side. You will find that D3 is shorted and R67 is open. The preamp is both cases will probably be damaged. Sorry. :-(

As for the 8TB, the prognosis is good, but you have cropped the image in the wrong place, so I can't show you what to do.

Thanks for the help. I don't trust myself doing anything on the board nor do I have any equipment. I will send that 8TB PCB to replace. Part of me is still sadly trying to not face reality, so may send those PCB for replacement first and then finally professional data recovery

 

[USAFRet]

For future reference:

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[arkitect]

Thanks for the read. I thought I had a lot of things covered by having a redundancy in my system, a highly rated PSU, power surge protector etc. But nothing prepared me for not knowing that different PSU cables have catastrophic effect like this.

At least my WD Red appears to have survived better so perhaps it will a less expensive fix. Though it's 1 week behind in backup, recovering that would mean I get all the important files back. I'll just redo 1 weeks worth of work and not have to go for the data recovery route.

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for the read. I thought I had a lot of things covered by having a redundancy in my system, a highly rated PSU, power surge protector etc. But nothing prepared me for not knowing that different PSU cables have catastrophic effect like this.

At least my WD Red appears to have survived better so perhaps it will a less expensive fix. Though it's 1 week behind in backup, recovering that would mean I get all the important files back. I'll just redo 1 weeks worth of work and not have to go for the data recovery route.

Hardware redundancy is not data redundancy.

That above linked procedure fully justified itself in a single drive fail.
960GB SSD, 605 GB on it, mostly irreplaceable photo library.
Click click...recovered ALL of it, exactly as it was at 4AM that morning when it ran its nightly backup.

Whether it is something you did, the drive just died, nasty virus, whatever...a second (or 3rd/4th) copy of your data is the key.
Cheap and easy.

 

[fzabkar]

Thanks for the help. I don't trust myself doing anything on the board nor do I have any equipment. I will send that 8TB PCB to replace. Part of me is still sadly trying to not face reality, so may send those PCB for replacement first and then finally professional data recovery

Send the 8TB PCB to hdd-parts.com. They will transfer the "ROM(s)" to a replacement PCB. The whole job should cost no more than US$50.

Otherwise the DIY solution is to remove the shorted 5V TVS diode and flow a blob of solder over the associated fuse or resistor. That will cost you nothing.

 

[arkitect]

Hardware redundancy is not data redundancy.

That above linked procedure fully justified itself in a single drive fail.
960GB SSD, 605 GB on it, mostly irreplaceable photo library.
Click click...recovered ALL of it, exactly as it was at 4AM that morning when it ran its nightly backup.

Whether it is something you did, the drive just died, nasty virus, whatever...a second (or 3rd/4th) copy of your data is the key.
Cheap and easy.

Makes sense. Yeah, I did have data redundancy, except it was on the same PSU cable that crushed both drives and I never anticipated that. I'll buy an external enclosure and put the backup in there instead.