Wd 500gb external hard drive wrong power supply

[kase]

Oh boy am I in trouble! I used my laptop power supply on my WD 500 gig external HD- It was juiced for about 10 to 20 seconds- apparently enough time to short it out- I have read several walkthroughs about this issue and am willing to try them - but need help- I am an auto mechanic and have several tech manuals and project info on this drive and would really need to salvage it for my business- If someone can help I would greatly appreciate it in advance and in the future- I have the case apart and need to buy a the small torx head to remove the board - i am will to post pictures of the parts if that helps-

My questions are, aside from the snipping of the overload diode, that I have read about - is there any other may of repairing this Hard Drive?

Again thanks to anyone who can help
KC

 

[c70nut]

Send it to these guys, I was very pleased with their service and was able to recover my drive:

http://www.onepcbsolution.com/

 

[TC Fulton]

To check a diode, you use forward to reverse measurement should be a min of 10 to one, but is normally a higher ratio - this only applies if the DVM can forward bias the diode.. If the DVM has a diode test, for a normal diode it will show the break down voltage, ie 0.7V for Si and 0.3or .4 V for Ge. DVM out put voltage is not high enough to check a zener diode this way.

To do an ohms check you would probably need to remove one end as the mete3r would read all parallel component resistance.

For the resistor if it has color bands, then you can compute the value it should be "Just google resistor color code.
More politically correct way to remember it, but forg, think it uses rum
Bad ........0
Boys ...... 1
Rxxx....... 2
Our ........ 3
Young .... 4
Girls ..... 5
But ........ 6
Violet .... 7
Gives .... 8
Willingly ..9
Silver 1/10 or 10%
gold 1/100 0r 5%

If not allow, mod please delete, hat to violate any rules

Oh man does that bring back some memories! I had that drilled into my head as a budding young aviation electronics tech in Navy A School Millington Tenn 1991 haha

 

[TC Fulton]

fzabkar I just want to say you're a good dude! There are so many egotistical know it all "data recovery" experts on the net cough cough HDDGuru forum!! You may be the only person that actually will give honest and thoughtful advice to anybody in need regardless of their expertise level. I would love to prove all those smug experts wrong with this drive.

i was the guy that posted the strange case of the sudden 750gb WD Scorpio Black failure. I'm convinced at the very least the pcb board is bad, it's not just the cheap lead free solder oxidation there are signs of serious heat damage. Yet most of the replies by these "experts" have been "your heads are damaged blah blah blah" As a former I-level Navy tech even I know there is no way in hell to properly diagnose a mechanical failure without personally troubleshooting down the components of the drive. They can only make guesses based on symptoms etc. They're like arm chair quarterbacks calling plays. lol
We opened the drive a few days ago in a clean lab at the University of Washington and I saw no visible damage to the platter, and the heads and arm were in the normal rest position off the disc. Now i know there doesn't have to be visible clues on the platter/s to have mechanical damage, but the fact that this drive never made unusual noises, or gave any real indication of imminent failure (passed SMART test a few day before failing) etc leads me to believe the clues lie in the pcb board and its components. Wonky bad sector readings, corrupted file tables.
I may be just venting but in my opinion WD just makes consumer grade junk hard drives for the masses. The fact that they would only cover a factory re-certified drive for 90 days tells me they have no confidence in the longevity and quality of their products. At least with Seagate you can still remove the bare drives from the external cases and use in laptops etc. The cheap integrated sata/usb bridge on some WD externals is the stupidest thing ever invented!

 

[Joe___133]

Oh boy am I in trouble! I used my laptop power supply on my WD 500 gig external HD- It was juiced for about 10 to 20 seconds- apparently enough time to short it out- I have read several walkthroughs about this issue and am willing to try them - but need help- I am an auto mechanic and have several tech manuals and project info on this drive and would really need to salvage it for my business- If someone can help I would greatly appreciate it in advance and in the future- I have the case apart and need to buy a the small torx head to remove the board - i am will to post pictures of the parts if that helps-

My questions are, aside from the snipping of the overload diode, that I have read about - is there any other may of repairing this Hard Drive?

Again thanks to anyone who can help
KC

 

[wibo640]

I also had the problem that I accidently switched the power connections of the (mini) computer and the drive. The PC worked, but the drive seemed dead ... 🙁 . It contains 2 TB of movies I collected of the last few years. So not a real disaster, but still painful.

Than I ran into this forum topic and decided it to give it a try. And guys: Fzabkar, Genio: thanks!

With the tip of Fzabkar and with help of the photo by Genio, I was able to remove D3 and D4 and make a bypass on R64 and R67. I started with D3/R67 but that didn't work, but after doing the same to D4/R64, I heard the drive spinning up after connecting power and USB. I am now copying over as much as I can, just to be sure.

My drive is a WD20EARS 2TB (Caviar green). My solder skills are not that great (Genio, your by-pass looks very good) but it worked!

Thanks for your valuable info !

 

[wibo640]

In addtion: despite the fact I was able to repair my board provisionally, I decided to make use of the services of PCB. This repair is still much more affordable than a new drive, since it seems my self-repaired board is not well protected against new power surges. Shipping to them (Netherlands to Canada) took a while, but then they acknowledged the receipt of the board, which I much appreciated. Soon after that the payment was settled, the new board was 'cloned' and shipped back to me and arrived in just 2 days! The drive is working fine. I especially like their good communication to customers and affordable procedure.

 

[AMasood]

Hi Fzakbar! I am unable to locate D3 or D4 or the resistors, can you help

 

[joak_th]

If you have a multimeter, then test R67. If it is open circuit, then there is a real chance that the preamp inside the HDA may be dead. :-(

For more detailed help, including assistance with a fiirmware transfer in the case of a board swap, I recommend the following data recovery forum:
http://malthus.zapto.org/

Hi fzabkar...first of all thanks for the help and good advise you give in these forums.

Recently my WD caviar green 1TB (WD10EARS-00MVWB0) stopped working (taking with it the PSU as well, d'oh).

So i measured the +5v and +12 pins to GND resistance: +12v-GND shows about 270kohms but +5v-GND shows some kind of capacitive charge up to 230kohms, which from what i have read is abnormal. Those measuments were performed with and without the PCB connected to the disk having the same readings in all the cases and using a 2-Mohm scale and trying with the +/- probes connected in both ways.

This may be obvious but checked the two pairs of TVS and 0-ohm resistors anyway and seemed to be fine.

Then i tried powering the disc up again using a different power supply (this time connected to mains in series with a lamp bulb) and monitoring +5V and +12V all the time. I could hear some noises coming from the disc as if it was trying to spin, but after a few seconds the voltages dropped while the lamp shined a bit, then it seemed to repeat the sequence after a few seconds, so i preferred not to overtest this since evidently there is some kind of short circuit. I disconnected the disc from the PCB and powered the PCB alone and i could hear a low noise like a humming (but i couldn't tell if it was coming from the PCB itself or the PS transformer)...although in this case I couldn't notice a voltage drop in the readings or a shine in the lamp.

So I was wondering if i decide to change the PCB, is it enough with swapping the 8-pin 2-Mbit spiflash chip only, or is it necessary to swap the controller chip as well? I ask this because i read in other pages that changing only the spiflash chip isn't enough for the disc to be recognized, and that would make the difference in daring to try this myself or not (leaving aside the fact that i will have to find a donor PCB first, haha).

Thanks in advance.