Hardware

i am suspicious of that dropping thing. actually the most if could muster was some moderate tapping on various places. in the old days, some old Quantum hard drives used to have grease on the axle thingy that would gum up over time and a good smack at boot would yield the happy face. hard for me to think that hitting a modern drive would do anything but further damage it. so you actually successfully used freeze/drop on newer drives and lived? that is good to know. thanks for your input.

thanks for understanding about adventure. didn't get to play with boy's tools until i was grown up so am pent up. you know, i bet the moisture is not a grave threat. just my opinion. freezing did seem to have very faint non-helpful effect, got the thing recognised briefly as 'removable drive'! i like Guru and Chas approach: put this in spares box with symptoms labelled and hope to use it to help pull a rabbit out of a hat in future...

thank you for your usual kind and helpful answer. those bullets for evaluating problem exactly what i was looking for. if i understand you correctly, you are saying changing pcb only worth a shot if symptoms=dead. but seems to me my symptoms don't suggest that as high probability of success fix. and don't remember any of the 200 that will fix drive if it can't move head (except send to Ontrack). not much impressed by that 200 list if i may be permitted to say. thanks very much for answering. you are great!

wasn't it the 2gb caviar that had a software fix posted from western digital that actually worked like magic to cure that condition. maybe it was the 1gb. so maybe not fair to say same failure. i suppose i have seen more wd failures too but think it is because i have seen more wd's period. seen other makes fail also...darn thing had a 3 yr warranty. not any indication of robustness i guess. just sales bait. but guess i will buy maxtors for a while now while the wound heals (smile). i am running a very old, very roughly handled/abused 15GB wd cavier for years now with no bad sectors. love your thoughts and THANKS for telling me how/why/when you swapped pcbs! so cool! restores my faith. just what i was fishing for. i am pleased at my reasonably good guessing about click=drive mech. but am not satisfied...why would controller failure cause heads to be stuck against detent. wouldn't controller be the one attempting to move heads? why would controller failure fail with my symptoms: first wobbly, stuck, current-drag sound with (apparently) lots of errors reading, then complete failure into clicking. and if motor failed, how come it clicks? how is something moving in there not driven by motor? maybe all explained by some *short* of motor??, something that makes it work but weakly then not at all? but what moves head against detent then? my favorite current hypothesis is head 'rubbing' itself more and more into stuckness. such tiny clearances. such high speed...i have to send drive back for warranty replacement but wish i could take it apart...thanks for helping me decide i probably trashed it with my experiments but *that* was my pay (was taught never to break stuff, you shoulda seen my wild eyes as i deliberately wrought havoc!! catholic girls start much too late) next time when drive is full of valuable corporate data maybe able to do proper job of attempting recovery. thanks very much. ps personally, i am implementing burn-in policy for new drives. at least recommend it. read/write whole drive for many hours. imho think if they live thru infancy, probability of not failing without trauma goes way up. guess i will google for a site on how drives work inside. thanks for listening and talking. you guys are the best.