HDD won't spin - Tried replacing PCB

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Slycer

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Jan 7, 2015
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Hi,


there are some serious experts on this board and I've learned a lot by reading fzabkars posts. Hope he sees this thread and chimes in. A month ago three of my drives failed. Five were running. A SSD survived along with a SATA drive, WD 20EFRX. I lost two Samsung HD204UIs and a WD 20EFRX. I don't know what happened. Drives were on mixed power leads so it couldn't have just been a power spike on one cable.

At this point in time I'm really only trying to save the WD 20EFRX. It contains all my study data, 10 years worth of photos, bank certificates and other things I accumulated over the years. Really, it's everything I care about in digital form.

The thing is that the drive will not spin up. I have ordered a replacement PCB from hdd-parts and swapped the BIOS chip. Well I had it swapped. Still NOTHING. If I plug the drive into the PC, it detects it in BIOS. When I started looking into things a month ago before I ordered the PCB I even downloaded a linux distro with hard drive tools and somehow, I have no idea how with the drive not spinning, I was able to BROWSE the drive. Every folder, every file was there. Since replacing the bios I only tested if it's still detected in BIOS and it is. Haven't yet tried to browse the contents again. Of course I wanted to copy the data the moment I saw I was able to browse the contents but I got an error. Probably expected since the drive wasn't spinning.

Does anyone have any idea what I could try doing to get the drive working? I am seriously desperate.


Thanks to anyone in advance.

 
If it is that important to you then you need to take it to a recovery professional.

Trying to recover data yourself is just more dangerous and you stand a higher chance of losing data.

Hate to say it but this might turn into an expensive lesson to backup your data.
 
I don't have thousands to spend on vacation photos and study notes. All the data is very dear to me but that does not mean I can spend myself into a horrible debt because of it.
 
The spindle motor may have failed. If that's the case then only a professional data recovery service can do the work as it requires a clean room environment. The platters will have to be removed and placed in a donor drive for recovery. If the data is that important then either you spend the money or do without. You've just learned an important lesson, the hard way, just why backups are so important.
 
Sending the drive away for repair is a last resort. I've emailed an american recovery company for a quote, acsdata if anyone knows it. I'm from Europe though. Can anyone here tell me how much such a repair would cost?

Right now I'd like to know if there's anything else I could try on my own. Since I already swapped the PCB I guess the DIY list is smaller. Still hoping there are things I could try.
 

If you were able to browse the folders, then the drive was spinning. The filesystem information like folder and file names is stored on the drive, and can't be viewed unless the drive is actually spinning.

It sounds more like the regulator that controls the spindle motor's speed is on the fritz. The drive is spinning at an inconsistent speed. Close enough to the right speed to occasionally see data, but not stable enough to actually transfer the data. Unfortunately, replacing the motor is a job for a professional recovery service. You have to open the drive in a clean room to access the motor.

Chalk it up as a lesson well-learned. 32GB USB 3.0 flash drives are about $15. There is simply no excuse not to have one for backups. (And if you think I'm being insensitive, I lost over 1000 hours of slide/negative scans and photo processing work in my first drive failure without a backup. That was also my last drive failure without a backup. Make sure this is your last one as well.)
 

There's nothing more you can do. In fact, as has already been stated, the more you mess with it the less likely even the pros will be able to successfully recover any data. Cost for recovery can vary widely, but expect $300-400 (USD) minimum, and it could run into 4 figures depending on how much work is involved.
 
I am almost certain that the drive was not spinning. TestDisk was able to read everything. I'll try again tomorrow. I'll post a video.

I guess the drive then is dead for I don't know how many months. Currently uneployed so I can't afford these sums. Will probably put it in a drawer and it'll sit until I get some funds. As funny as it sounds, this whole thing has seriously put me off computers. I don't have anything left of value stored anywhere.
 
I have fired TestDisk once again. I can see everything. Upon estDisk bootup there is an error SPINUP failed.

I have browsed through the files and copied a bunch of photos onto the Parted Magic desktop. I'll try to copy those same files onto a usb stick and use them on my primary PC. I'm all giddy.
 
Is it possible that hddparts are supplying PCBs with PUIS (Power Up In Standby) enabled, either via the PM2 jumper or via a firmware setting?

If the latter is the case, then you could use a tool such as HDAT2 to disable PUIS. However, you will need to wake up the drive with the /w switch ...

HDAT2 /w

You may also need to temporarily reconfigure the SATA conntroller for legacy or IDE compatibility mode in your BIOS setup in order for HDAT2 to see it.
 
I don't know, i'll send them an email! Hope that this could be it though.

Okay.. So I've just been able to copy a bunch of files from the drive. I used TestDisk to first copy onto the live boot cd desktop and then onto the flash drive formated into FAT32. I still get a bunch of weird errors though. I'm talking intact PDFs, pictures, documents, various files.

I'm sorry to post over you, fzabkar. I'm in a daze right now. This copy style is very slow but it gives me some hope.
 
That is fantastic information fzabkar!!! I'm currently working on the 20EFRX, it appears that 30 gigs at a time (size of my usb pen drive) I'll be able to salvage everything! I'm already backuping to OneDrive.

After I'm done I'll try to do what you said with those diodes. The data on those two remaining drives is not that critical. What's different with those two is that they arent even detected by BIOS like the one I'm working on now. I hope that your solution works and I'll be able to get the drives working again. I'll test the diodes with my multimeter in a few hours.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to help.
 
Fzabkar, I tried testing the diods on the HD204UI. I'm not sure if I'm doing this right (regarding the resistance scale), I get a measurement on one 5V diode ( I get 1.4 kOHM), and an OL on the other three. The range is set to Auto.

The diode test on the multimeter also only gives a reading on that one diode. 0.4V.
 
Thanks very much for that link. I saw several threads at WD where I suspected that PUIS was the issue (one person lost all his 4TB drives), but I couldn't understand why. Your find clarifies everything. However, I find it very strange that Microsoft are directing users to third party solutions for a problem they have created.
 
They should have put out a bulletin, a LARGE RED POPUP for every user on their beta Windows 10. I'm so disgusted by this. I spent money on a new PCB, waited a month for it to arrive. It's a good god damn thing that I haven't yet pried off a diode looking for a fix.
 
Microsoft make it well known that Windows 10 is not for production environments or sensitive data.

The lesson here is backup and try the drive on different system/OS (you did try on Linux which you, and we, should have identified as it was working)
 


Fzabkar, I'm desperately trying to revive those Samsung HD204UI's. It has got to be the same problem as with the WD. But unlike the WD I cant even see these two Samsung drives in BIOS or in parted magic. I cant issue any hdparm command when the system doesn't even map the drive.

Any ideas? It has got to be a puis problem again. All three drives failed at the same time.
 
I would use HDAT2 and launch it from a bootable FreeDOS USB flash drive.

Use the /w switch to wake up the drives, ie ...

HDAT2 /w

Then disable PUIS.

You may need to temporarily reconfigure the SATA controller in BIOS for legacy or IDE compatibility mode.

Alternatively, boot to a Ubuntu Live CD. This should wake up the drives. Then warm boot into Windows and use hdparm.
 
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