- Aug 5, 2019
- 9
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Hello everyone!
Writing this post regarding a Western Digital Green 2 TB HDD (WD20EZRX) that failed a couple of days back. The disk was purchased back on March 2013 and was used as a secondary backup device (the primary being an SSD). Just a day before the HDD failed, I noticed that it was not showing up on "This PC". I restarted my PC and it showed up normally.
Being worried, I ran a Windows Disk Check on the drive(it has only 1 partition). It completed fine. Also ran a quick test from the WD Diagnostics Utility which also completed without an errors. S.M.A.R.T. status showed OK. I accessed some files and also transferred some photos from my mobile device to the drive. Exactly the next day, while turning on my PC I noticed that Windows was taking unusually long to load.
Since this happens sometimes when a faulty drive is present, I quickly opened up "This PC" and Device Manager to find that the drive was not showing. Restarted my PC to no avail. The drive was not even showing in BIOS. I restarted the PC again and took my ears close to the drive bay and realised that the drive is not able to spin up. It spins for about 4-5 seconds on starting and stops completely and is dead silent.
Restarting the PC again causes the same thing to happen. Once after those initial five seconds, the drive doesn't try to spin up again and is virtually dead. Windows takes much longer to load on a separate SSD, while the faulty HDD is kept connected.
However, diskpart doesn't have any delay while running in Command Prompt and shows up(diskpart usually takes a lot of time to pop up when a drive with bad sectors is connected to the system). After restarting the PC once more i touched the PCB and found out that the part of the PCB below the motor controller IC is getting extremely hot(above 70 °C or so), whereas the rest of the PCB is a little above ambient temperatures.
The surface of the HDD cover is also close to ambient. I opened only the PCB by removing the torx screws. There were no apparent burn marks on any area of the PCB. Didn't check for shorts with a multimeter. I had an old WD Blue 1 TB lying around, which is still detected but has some bad sectors.
Knowing that a PCB swap with exactly the same model of HDD, having same board Rev., DCM, etc doesn't solve the issue as the firmware chip needs to be transplanted (and in some cases the firmware chips aren't even on the PCB).
On swapping the PCB anyways, from the Blue 1 TB, I noticed that the HDD was detected in BIOS as ATA(186540 MB) which is otherwise WD20EZRX(186540 MB). The drive now spinned up for a few seconds and started clicking repeatedly, probably due to firmware and board mismatch. However it didn't completely stop like before and the clicking continued.
However there was no screeching, beeping or squealing noise, neither after the PCB change, nor before. However the same area on the Blue 1 TB's PCB was still extremely hot(nearly untouchable). I turned off my PC, removed the HDD, put back the respective PCBs. Plugged back the Faulty Green 2TB. Same issue, spins for exactly 5 seconds and then dead silent.
At this point I removed it and stored it away in an ESD free bag and submitted it to a professional data recovery centre the next day. Connecting the Blue 1 TB later I found out the same area of the PCB was much cooler than it was on the Green 2 TB.
Now the Professional Data Recovery centre has charged around 700$ excluding taxes to recover the data and they won't specify me the exact issue with the HDD even after many requests. I suspect this is a PCB issue and at max a motor issue in addition to the PCB.
Need some confirmation on the matter from people who have extensive knowledge on this topic. I know what goes into Data Recovery, the costs of equipment like PCH3000, clean room costs, but I feel they are overcharging me considering the fact that PCB issues are charged around 1/3rd of what they quoted provided there are no mechanical faults or physical damage. Even a motor failure along with the PCB demands a maximum of 500$ from competitive recovery providers.
Problem is my province has only two data recovery providers and it's kind of a duopoly over here and sending it to another province where it's really competitive will involve shipping. There is also a malpractice that goes on wherein if you refuse to proceed with the job, the recovery centre cause some more physical damage internally to make it difficult for other providers to recover it. They do this even after charging a non refundable analysis fee of 15-30$.
If anyone has taken the time to go through so much stuff then thank you already. Any information that can shed light on what exactly the issue might be, will be of immense help.
P.S. : Attached a reference picture of the same PCB highlighting the area that was overheating in green.
Writing this post regarding a Western Digital Green 2 TB HDD (WD20EZRX) that failed a couple of days back. The disk was purchased back on March 2013 and was used as a secondary backup device (the primary being an SSD). Just a day before the HDD failed, I noticed that it was not showing up on "This PC". I restarted my PC and it showed up normally.
Being worried, I ran a Windows Disk Check on the drive(it has only 1 partition). It completed fine. Also ran a quick test from the WD Diagnostics Utility which also completed without an errors. S.M.A.R.T. status showed OK. I accessed some files and also transferred some photos from my mobile device to the drive. Exactly the next day, while turning on my PC I noticed that Windows was taking unusually long to load.
Since this happens sometimes when a faulty drive is present, I quickly opened up "This PC" and Device Manager to find that the drive was not showing. Restarted my PC to no avail. The drive was not even showing in BIOS. I restarted the PC again and took my ears close to the drive bay and realised that the drive is not able to spin up. It spins for about 4-5 seconds on starting and stops completely and is dead silent.
Restarting the PC again causes the same thing to happen. Once after those initial five seconds, the drive doesn't try to spin up again and is virtually dead. Windows takes much longer to load on a separate SSD, while the faulty HDD is kept connected.
However, diskpart doesn't have any delay while running in Command Prompt and shows up(diskpart usually takes a lot of time to pop up when a drive with bad sectors is connected to the system). After restarting the PC once more i touched the PCB and found out that the part of the PCB below the motor controller IC is getting extremely hot(above 70 °C or so), whereas the rest of the PCB is a little above ambient temperatures.
The surface of the HDD cover is also close to ambient. I opened only the PCB by removing the torx screws. There were no apparent burn marks on any area of the PCB. Didn't check for shorts with a multimeter. I had an old WD Blue 1 TB lying around, which is still detected but has some bad sectors.
Knowing that a PCB swap with exactly the same model of HDD, having same board Rev., DCM, etc doesn't solve the issue as the firmware chip needs to be transplanted (and in some cases the firmware chips aren't even on the PCB).
On swapping the PCB anyways, from the Blue 1 TB, I noticed that the HDD was detected in BIOS as ATA(186540 MB) which is otherwise WD20EZRX(186540 MB). The drive now spinned up for a few seconds and started clicking repeatedly, probably due to firmware and board mismatch. However it didn't completely stop like before and the clicking continued.
However there was no screeching, beeping or squealing noise, neither after the PCB change, nor before. However the same area on the Blue 1 TB's PCB was still extremely hot(nearly untouchable). I turned off my PC, removed the HDD, put back the respective PCBs. Plugged back the Faulty Green 2TB. Same issue, spins for exactly 5 seconds and then dead silent.
At this point I removed it and stored it away in an ESD free bag and submitted it to a professional data recovery centre the next day. Connecting the Blue 1 TB later I found out the same area of the PCB was much cooler than it was on the Green 2 TB.
Now the Professional Data Recovery centre has charged around 700$ excluding taxes to recover the data and they won't specify me the exact issue with the HDD even after many requests. I suspect this is a PCB issue and at max a motor issue in addition to the PCB.
Need some confirmation on the matter from people who have extensive knowledge on this topic. I know what goes into Data Recovery, the costs of equipment like PCH3000, clean room costs, but I feel they are overcharging me considering the fact that PCB issues are charged around 1/3rd of what they quoted provided there are no mechanical faults or physical damage. Even a motor failure along with the PCB demands a maximum of 500$ from competitive recovery providers.
Problem is my province has only two data recovery providers and it's kind of a duopoly over here and sending it to another province where it's really competitive will involve shipping. There is also a malpractice that goes on wherein if you refuse to proceed with the job, the recovery centre cause some more physical damage internally to make it difficult for other providers to recover it. They do this even after charging a non refundable analysis fee of 15-30$.
If anyone has taken the time to go through so much stuff then thank you already. Any information that can shed light on what exactly the issue might be, will be of immense help.
P.S. : Attached a reference picture of the same PCB highlighting the area that was overheating in green.
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