Question: I have a dead 1.5 TB WD Caviar Green hard drive that I’d like to try to fix by replacing the drive’s PCB.
The drive was housed in an external enclosure. ?After a power cycle, neither the drive nor the enclosure would power up, and the computer would not recognize the drive as being connected. ?I tried it in a different enclosure, with the same results. ?I suspect that the 1st enclosure has damaged the drive’s electronics (this is the second drive it’s killed in this way) but the data on the platters is OK.
Here’s the drive’s information:
From the top sticker:
Model : WD15EADS-00P8B0WWN: 50014EE0AC71C1ACDATE: 11 NOV 2009DCM: HARCHT2MALBA: 29302771685VDC: 0.70A12VDC: 0.55AR/N: 701640
From the PCB:
Printed on the board itself: 2060-701640-002 REV AOn a sticker with a bar code: 2061-701640-202 04PD1 XW 8R41 UTMD 6 000 4180 0184
Here’s some images of the drive:
My questions are:
I understand it’s very important to get an exact match to successfully replace a drive’s PCB. ?Which of the above information is relevant to a match, and which of it is irrelevant?
What are some good places to get replacement PCBs for hard disks, or places to get a matched drive to harvest a PCB from?
If you’ve replaced a PCB of a hard drive, what what you experience?
Answer: The websites referred to by Moab in his comments are the only two I know of that will help you find correct hard drive PCBs. Firms that do this professionally simply buy an entire matching drive and remove the board from it.
Know that this is a very risky operation. The connections between the board and the hard disk are surface-mount-soldered to very small pads. I doubt there are any humans that can do this completely reliably, it’s very difficult. Drive recovery firms use custom jigs and specialized devices. If the data on the drive is valuable to you, you should really have the drive serviced by professionals (which, to my experience, are far more likely to conduct a platter transplant, as this is faster and easier than a PCB replacement). Essentially, I think you’re guaranteed to fail, possibly expensively.