Solved Drive failure. PSU cables? Handling?

[charkzilla20]

Hello everyone. I need help again.

I have a hard drive. A "Western Digital Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache".
Had it for a year and a half.
Today I was doing some internal maintenance. Dusting, re-applying thermal paste, rewiring, and moving my drives to the 5.25 bay. I've been looking to install a water cooling loop, and wanted to remove the drive bay of my haf 922 to make space for the front radiator, pump, reservoir, etc. I took the spinning drive from the drive bay and screwed on the 5.25 adapters that came with the case. Sliding the drive into the 5.25 bay was a little bit of a tight squeeze, but it seemed fine.
I used some new drive power cables that came extra with my brother's Evga psu. They were all black, a little thinner and more flexible, and looked nicer than the cables from my seasonic psu, so I hooked up the drives with them.
Then I go to turn the thing on. I press the power, and the fans spin a quarter turn and the whole thing fails in less than a second.
I unplugged the drives, and it went into the bios totally fine.
I plug in either the ssd or the hdd individually and the thing wont start again.
I use my old uglier cables and the thing works completely fine.

With a little experiment, I tested a drive with my brother's computer using MY psu's cable, and the same thing happened. Different psu, different cable, failed to start.
Same Psu cable as the psu, and it works fine...
Is this weird!?

So once I got that sorted out (i just sucked it up and used my ugly cables), i found the HDD wasn't being recognized by the bios. I tried different data and power cables, different ports... nothing.
I can't tell if the thing is spinning up. I don't think it is. The bottom of the exposed pcb board gets a little warm. Is that normal?
I didn't hear any horrible screeching or sparking, so I suspect the data on the disk is intact, but perhaps the circuitry got damaged while i was handling it, squeezing it into the case, putting on the adapter...
Or maybe the PSU freaked out at the new cable and sent a billion volts to the thing...
But the SSDs are working fine, and they were on the same cable. (thank the computer gods, that would have been horrible.)

Luckily I have all the stuff i really care about backed up off this broken HDD.
But I still want to get it working. Maybe get the stuff I lost off of it.
Data recovery maybe?
Any help or advice appreciated. Thanks

 

[GokAy]

You can burn the drives trying that. I did the same mistake 5 years ago. The plugs seem compatible and clamp tight in place but it is possible the metals are not touching each other, or like in my case cause them to die. (2 harddisks and 1 DVD drive died same time, go figure).

Halt until others comment with their experience.

 

[CKWD]

Hello charkzilla20!

I'm sorry for your problem!

If the drive has been damaged by the power cords somehow, I would advise you to be careful using or connecting it; if it has had a power surge it's possible it can short circuit your system! Let's hope not, though.

If you didn't see the drive anywhere in the system, not even BIOS, the chances of fixing it and making it visible to the system seem slim. You could try connecting it with a USB to SATA cable externally, see if it shows up.

But if you really have the most important stuff backed up, then I would advise you to check if you could just RMA it. The WD Black has 5-year limited warranty.

WD Warranty Check:
Support Answers

WD Warranty Policy:
Support Answers

Post back!

CK_WD

 

[GokAy]

CKWD, he hasn't damaged the drives (yet ).

I use my old uglier cables and the thing works completely fine.

 

[charkzilla20]

CKWD, he hasn't damaged the drives (yet ).

I use my old uglier cables and the thing works completely fine.

the other drives. The ssds/cd drive. The hdd is still a paperweight.

thanks for the responses guys. with a little research, i found that the no-spinning symptoms are possibly because of a so-called "tvs diode" that will fry when overvolted to protect the other parts. I found them on the pcb board on the hdd, and i'll put a meter to them tomorrow. Apparently they can be replaced with some soldering. I'll look into it...
thanks again

 

[GokAy]

Bah, reading skills ftw!

In my case, the drives were all brand new WD Green Caviars. I told the company I fried them (consumer error) and asked whatever they could do. Fortunately, the distributer replaced all the drives, including the DVD. I am still grateful for that.

Hope you sort it out as well.

 

[charkzilla20]

Bah, reading skills ftw!

In my case, the drives were all brand new WD Green Caviars. I told the company I fried them (consumer error) and asked whatever they could do. Fortunately, the distributer replaced all the drives, including the DVD. I am still grateful for that.

Hope you sort it out as well.

Hey
Thanks for your advice

I took it all apart, and found that there was in fact a TVS diode shorted. WD's site said that simply removing it would restore the function of the drive if that was the issue, but after doing so, found it still unresponsive. I did make note that the cluster of resistors on the pcb board gets too hot to touch when it's receiving power for more than a minute... maybe that's something worth investigating...
I doubt I'll get the drive working :/ I'll go get a new one, and just suck up the lost data. I'll have to reinstall a helluva lot of programs, and I lost a few project files. :'(
I might take it into a data recovery place nearby and ask if they can do anything. Hopefully it won't cost an arm and a leg.
Or there's a WD office nearby. I'll go bang on the door and complain XD

 

[CKWD]

Hi again!

That's too bad you had to lose project files, I can relate!

If the drive's platters are intact, then in a Data recovery company you can get back the information.
Unfortunately, the warranty was voided, but this is a list of WD's Data recovery partners that are best familiar with WD's drives, firmware, software etc.

WD Partner Data recovery companies:
Support Answers

I hope this doesn't happen again and I wish you best of luck!

CK_WD

 

[charkzilla20]

Hi again!

That's too bad you had to lose project files, I can relate!

If the drive's platters are intact, then in a Data recovery company you can get back the information.
Unfortunately, the warranty was voided, but this is a list of WD's Data recovery partners that are best familiar with WD's drives, firmware, software etc.

WD Partner Data recovery companies:
Support Answers

I hope this doesn't happen again and I wish you best of luck!

CK_WD

Yeah, honestly, i'm not bummed about the price of the drive that much. No warranty is fine. I wouldn't give them the broken drive even if they begged for it. :/ I'm going to be replacing it with a new one in the mean time, a 1tb "fzex" wd black. Supposedly the single-plattered version of the one i have.
Then I plan to replace/test the motor of the drive, maybe it just crapped out. Are there replacement motors without opening the sealed platter chamber?
I'm prepared to purchase an equivalent PCB board and transfer the ROM chips over to try and get the data off it myself, but anything more than that, I'll take it to some pros.
At this point, my computer has so many broken functionalities without the drive it's been used to available. The registry is whack. It's trying to compensate for programs no longer there...

Again, thanks for your advice

 

[CKWD]

Yes, the FZEX line has enhanced features over the previous generation to maximize system performance.

Unfortunately, the operations you are referring to are unauthorized and as an official representative I can't comment on them, I hope you understand. Generally, any physical/mechanical repair on hard drives needs to be done in clean environment by professionals.

If you want to try and fix the drive with donor parts by yourself, than I can only say good luck and I hope you manage to get the data off of it.

CK_WD