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Yet another deep fried WD

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LAN_403

Conundrum

Wed Jun 02 2010, 09:49PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Hi all.
Yes, just to add insult to injury my nearly new 320GB MyBook piece of junk has bitten the dust.

Works fine until you try to copy more than a couple of files and then it falls over (copy speed drops down to near zero and it "hangs")

Took it apart with the aid of an expired bank card as the warranty is NOT worth as much as my data, and it appears that like many "dead" external drives the controller chip is faulty but the hard disk is probably fine.

I don't think that the chip should get so hot you can't hold a finger on it, their idea of thermal management sucks to say the least.
next step after backing up the data using my PC, try and either swap out the controller board plugged into the SATA connector or (more likely) install the hdd in a spare machine as an upgrade.

reckon its worth sticking a heatsink on the chip to see if this helps?

Like so...
1275516230 96 FT1630 Wdsucks

Update:- it scans to 100%, now to find 300GB of hard drive space :)

thanks in advance, -A

"Bother" said Pooh, as he committed first degree toastercide...

Cprossu

Wed Jul 14 2010, 04:44AM

Registered Member #985 Joined: Thu Sept 06 2007, 04:21PM
Location: Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Posts: 12

A month or so late, but meh-

Are you saying the only problem is the controller that's plugged into the sata and not the drive's own controller? if so you can just grab a handy dandy usb external hard drive kit and be on your way, they go for like $9-$15 on various new eggy places...

but if it's the controller on the hard drive itself, then you'll have to find the same week of manufacturer, same plant and same size sata 2.5" drive to pull the control board from and transplant onto your old drive to get the data back, and even then it's tricky at best and I wouldn't trust the drive as far as I could throw it.

Everyone has a different hdd manufacturer that's been good and bad to them though, WD's just been a thorn in my side always xD

Conundrum

Wed Jul 14 2010, 05:44PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

problem is the controller. i gutted my (busted) 250GB with the dropped HDD and swapped out the drive, works fine.

thanks for your help though.
-A

Adam Munich

Wed Jul 14 2010, 10:15PM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

One word.

SEAGATE

Conundrum

Wed Oct 13 2010, 06:09AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

One word.
CHEAP

I did some tests and the connectors on many external drives are very delicate (esp. the 5 pin mini variety) and break internally or pull off the PCB with no warning at all leaving you with a brick.

Interestingly the main problem with external drives failing to spin up (ie the "tweet of death" or "buzz of death") is caused by inadequate USB power, if you have this problem buy a dual head cable and this should fix it.

most "broken" external drives are normally fine unless dropped, and even then can often work fine from the PC's SATA port for the purposes of backing up data (unsure why, perhaps the motor draws more power or something?)

-A
"Bother" said Pooh, as his 3G dongle dropped out for the 47th time...

Nicko

Tue Nov 09 2010, 01:51PM

Registered Member #1334 Joined: Tue Feb 19 2008, 04:37PM
Location: Nr. London, UK
Posts: 615

All these drives are now SMART enabled - get a copy of GSmartControl from

It interrogates the SMART interface of the drive and can execute and report on the (non-destructive) internal diagnostics (includes "Conveyance Tests" - i.e. errors that occur during transport).

Just used it to look at one of the 1TB Samsung drives in my RAID 1 NAS (a DNS-323) - found the problem easily.

Fantastic tool. And *free* !

Cheers

Artikbot

Wed Nov 17 2010, 08:50AM

Registered Member #3247 Joined: Mon Sept 27 2010, 09:42AM
Location: Spain
Posts: 137

Grenadier wrote ...

One word.

SEAGATE

Wise words friend, wise words. Every single disk at home is a Seagate and only one failed. After 14 years of fellow service. And it failed in a way I could recover almost the entire data

dingo27

Wed Dec 08 2010, 02:14PM

Registered Member #890 Joined: Tue Jul 10 2007, 10:06PM
Location: Slovakia
Posts: 180

Sooner or later all disk fails, its not matter of manufacturer, but a quality. WD are generally good, i have 3 of them (all 2.5') and only one was bad - and i think it was bad when i bought it.

One of them is free fall 320GB which could survive hamering nails with laptop, second one was default cheap 80GB, but i used it in bus watching movies and it still works with no bad sector.

Conundrum

Sun Dec 19 2010, 02:18PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

WD good? hmm.
Well if you say so, this laptop has a 500GB WD and has worked fine for over a year so maybe they fixed the problems.
Just looking at buying a 750GB WD...
-A

Adam Munich

Sun Dec 19 2010, 02:20PM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

Conundrum wrote ...

Just looking at buying a 750GB WD...

Go 4 teh gold.

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