Hard Drive with swapped electronics not working

Hello everyone,

My father-in-law just sent me his hard drive from I system that I built for him. He had been installing a new sound card and after powering-up, he said there was a "zap ". His motherboard got fried, which he replaced. His hard drive wasn't working though so he sent it to me to give it a go.

I figured that the drive's electronics somehow got fried as well, or at least I suspected this. When I put it in a system here, sure enough, the bios wouldn't recognize it and the hard drive would not spin. Since I had given him the hard drive, I had an identical hard drive (same model number) here at home (I try to always buy two drives at a time with identical model numbers) After swapping the drive's electronics and powering-up, sure enough the drive was spinning and the bios would recognize it. Unfortunately, it makes recurring clicking noises, like the heads are being moved back and forth and the computer can't recognize or interpret the data. I have contacted several data recovery labs, but they want major dinero. My father-in-law doesn't need the data, but since I am so anal-retentive and a computer geek at heart I don't have the heart to give up that easily.

I have tried Steve Gibson's SpinRite 6.0 Software (which I love) but to no avail. I also tried Western Digital's Data Lifeguard software (booting from DOS) to try to copy the partition to a separate hard drive, also to no avail. I have tried to use Partition Magic 8.0 to copy the partition, but also it was a no go. I even tried Ontrack's EZ Recovery Professional Software which I have owned for a while, but, you guessed it: NO GO!

The hard drive is a Western Digital 20 GB drive, model number: WD200BB-00CJA0. It is still under warranty and Western Digital will replace the drive at no cost. BUT ... since I love solving problems, I thought I would see if anyone in cyberland could shed some light on this. Thanks.

 

It only makes a clicking noise for the first 5-10 seconds then it will completely stop making any noise but still continue to spin. It seems that it is trying to locate the first sector of data and then retries over and over again but without much luck.

 

Your drive is doing what we affectionately call the "Death Rattle ". A hard disk that does this even once every time you boot it is destined to die very soon. There is nothing at all you can do for it but use it as a paper weight. If you can get it to work long enough to get data off it if needed, great, but either way it is doomed.

The zap the machine took also damaged your hard disk drive. What you did would work (swapping controller card with same model HDD) but if the drive has more damage than the controller, its all over.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

 

Hi Braceface.

The disk platter is matched with the electronics on the drive by doing a low-level format. The subtle timing differences in the electronics is enough to throw it off. I doubt if you can recover any data currently on the board with the present configuration (new electronics) but if you performed a low-level format you should wind up with a perfectly aligned drive re the surface to the electronics. You can download low-level format programs from the manufacturer. They all have them.

A lot of the time when a drive seems to be going dead when it has a lot of wear (or new electronics) is just the heads going off track due to the wear. Instead of reading the center of a track it is actually starting to go inbetween the tracks and doesn't work anymore. A new low-level will realign the heads to a new track and everything is working again.

I'd certainly give that a try before letting it go to the great hard disk place in the sky.

giles

 

I Did It!!!! Believe It Or Not!!

Well I truly appreciate everything you all had to say ... BUT ... I finally solved the problem. (I don't take all the credit though, cause you all made me think! So Thanks to all!)

As I suspected, the electronics indeed got fried but not the drive itself.

After doing an exhastive search on Google for similar problems out there, I came across two poor souls who had been requesting replacement hard drives from whoever had them, to replace their drives with similar problems to those that I had described before. It turns out that they both had not only been requesting drives with the exact same model number, but also another number called the "DCM" that they wanted exactly the same also.
HUMMM!! THINK, THINK, THINK.

After reviewing both drives' electronics that I had tried, I discovered that they both had a slightly different DCM number.

"FRIED" DRIVE
Western Digital
WD Caviar - Enhanced IDE
MDL: WD200BB-00CJA0
DATE: 27 JAN 2002
DCM: HSEHNA2AH <-- This has an "A "

"GOOD" DRIVE
Western Digital
WD Caviar - Enhanced IDE
MDL: WD200BB-00CJA0
DATE: 27 JAN 2002
DCM: HSEHNV2AH <-- This has a "V "

Well, to make a long story a little shorter, I scrounged-around my office to see if by chance one of my computers had the exact same numbers. (I had built around six machines all at the same time.) You guessed it. I found I had one with the exact same numbers!! I swapped out the electronics and ... booted up (after setting it up as a "Slave" drive). The drive started spinning, the bios instantly recognized the drive, and it purrrrrred soooooo sweet! No noises whatsoever! Windows XP recognized the additional drive and I transferred all the files over to a folder on my main hard drive.
I then ran SpinRite 6.0 (after re-booting) just to see if any drive sector was damaged. It saw about 5 bad sectors only two of which weren't able to completely move all the data over (just most of it) to good sectors. Overall, however, it gave it a clean bill of health. I rebooted to Windows XP and ran Partition Magic 8.0 and copied the partition to space on another hard drive. AWESOME!!!!!!

MORAL(S) OF THE STORY:
1. I was extremely lucky! (No Doubt about that one!)
2. When you buy a hard drive (Buy two with "EXACTLY" the same numbers)
(this problem had happened to me before on another machine, but silly me I didn't have a replacement drive ... so I sent it to a drive recovery center and after I became about $1500 poorer, I had all my data recovered.)
(You probably will have to buy your drives from a small mom & pop type place instead of a large retailer (i.e. Costco, Bestbuy, CompUSA) in order to see all the drive numbers through the metallic looking plastic bag around the drive.
3. Make sure you do your backups early and often (This probably should head this list)
4. GO WITH YOUR GUT INSTINCT! Most of the time you will probably be right!

Thanks for listening.

I hope this can help anyone out there for years to come.

Remember, we are all in this together! (Okay, I'll get off my soap box now.)

 

DCM is short for what? it sounds like a board revision number or something like that.

 

Dcm

Sorry, I didn't respond earlier.

I have tried to find the answer, but I don't know what DCM stands for.

Anyone else know?

 

DCM = Data Communication Module


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=DCM+hard+drive+number&btnG=Google+Search

Your thread even made the Google hit list.