Question about a dead hd

D

DarkCyber

[H]ard|Gawd
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May 14, 2003
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I have a Western Digital 2 TB SATA hard drive, WD20EARS, that was in a WD external enclosure that just stopped working and is out of warranty as of June 2010. I took the hd out of the enclosure and hooked it up straight to my motherboard and the BIOS doesn't even see it. So, my question is, if the BIOS is not even seeing it, then is it more possible that this is an issue with the circuit board on the outside of the drive? My theroy is that if it was a hardware failure, then the electronics of the drive would at least still tell the BIOS the drive was there.

Also, is the circuit board on the outside of the hd the main electronics for the drive or are there more located on the inside of the seal case? Just trying to see whether it is worth trying to get another circuit board and try it.
 
then is it more possible that this is an issue with the circuit board on the outside of the drive?
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Or it could be the motor / heads ... Does the motor spin up? When you plug it in does it click for a few seconds or longer?
 
drescherjm said:
Or it could be the motor / heads ... Does the motor spin up? When you plug it in does it click for a few seconds or longer?
Click to expand...

Nope, no noise whatsoever. No spinning, no clicking...etc. Thus, why I thought it could be the electronic side of it. Because if the electronics went out then the motor wouldn't get power and the circuit board would not power up telling the BIOS that the hd was there.
 
Well, I put this into another external enclosure and powered up the drive and put my ear on the drive and I can hear it starting up and spinning. It is not making any clicking noise. I also get a popup in Windows 7 that it has detected the hd, but I cannot see it in Windows Explorer or Admin Tools, however it does show up under Device Manager.
 
I have heard that if you have the same model of drive with the same firmware preferably, you can swap the circuit boards with a good drive.

I have tried this twice with no luck at accessing the bad drive, and no detrimental effects to the donar drives.

It just depends on where the problem lies. I would imagine that electrical failures are much more rare than mechanical failure.

Don
 
I would imagine that electrical failures are much more rare than mechanical failure.
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Agreed, I have never had a single electrical failure however 10 to 20 mechanical failures per year here at work.
 
Yeah, I agree. I assume it is some kind of mechanical failure, since the hd will spin up and will also show up in the Windows 7 Device Manager, but nothing else. That kind of tells me the electronics are probably ok or Win 7 wouldn't even see it at all.
 
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