Burned hard drive board. Switch out?

I recently discovered a 120GB WD hard drive with a burnt out circuit board. it was in an external enclosure that was plugged into a 18.4V adapter when it only takes 12V. You can see the problem. i know you have to match exactly the boards to interchange them but i tried a 120GB WD hard drive board from a newer model and it spun but just clicked several times and never worked. anybody have experience with this? here are the hard drive specs:

WD1200BB-00DAA3
2MB buffer

that's pretty much all you need but if you want more specs you can type that into the website at www.westerndigital.com .

My knowledge and matching skills tell me to switch out a board from a WD1200BB drive and see if it works? i thought i'd call on the experts first to see if i'm correct and if i am, did i damage the drive using a WD1200JB board? thanks.

 

Hi Pudini,

Are you desperate to retrieve data from the drive? I would feel it would not be worth risking another good circuit board, then maybe having two drives that won't work. If you were to find that the circuit board was the problem (the motors have not been damaged) then you will probably find the cost of buying a new circuit board is not much less than a whole new drive.

I was given a drive that I suspect has a bad circuit board. It is sitting on a shelf waiting for another drive of the same model with motor problems to "happen by ", I am not going to work on it otherwise.

Desperate for the data? Try the trick of putting it in the freezer for a few hours. After that it would be the "data retrieval experts ".

Matt

 

a chip on the board is burned out there is a hole in it from the burn. now if a freezer would fix that, people wouldn't spend 2000 dollars on data retrieval.

 

The freezer trick is for an armeture stuck on a platter and it works for that, but this is not your problem. You may have damaged things by using that 8MB cache drive controller, but in my book its worth buying another 2MB cache WD 1200BB and trying it - if it doesn't work, you can always move the controller back to the new drive and you will at least have one good drive. I don't think you'll burn out the new controller by trying it on your bad drive, but I couldn't guarantee it.

 

Well i ordered a WD1200BB drive and the screws are all lined up except one of them, i'm not trying this again. this drive that i ordered was brand new made in May 2004 where my drive was made in July 2nd 2003. i need a Western Digital hard drive made around that year. that is a WD1200BB-00DAA3. I called WD and they said it might work if i get that exact same drive with the exact same firmware. i hope i can find one. if you gyus happen to locate this drive available for purchase please email me @ cvandrei21@adelphia.net or if you feel more confortable post a reply. i'm in desperate need. thank you.

 

You'll be well served to check ebay as your potential best source and you will need to make sure that those last six numbers/characters are accurate - they differentiate between Malaysian and Tawainese manufacture - I'd even get very specific with the date of Mfg to ensure correct firmware and exact hardware.

 

It is listed here:
http://www.kamcom.com/westerndigital/westerndigital2.htm

Matt

 

Great Catch mattman.

 

Lucky find in a Google search Rockster

Matt

 

Thanks guys but Kamcom doesn't have one in stock. but it's a retail and they would have to open it to make sure it's a 00DAA3 and he mentioned no company would do that for me cause then they can't sell them new. I'm trying a few other things.