My 3tb WD Elements from 2021 with model family number WD30NDZW was dropped while disconnected from about three feet onto laminate. Stupidly, I inserted it right after to see if it was fatal, it made rapid clicking and some buzzing, with the LED on, files could not be read and Windows suggested a format which I declined.
Upon opening, there was no indication of a head crash, the platter was unscathed and clean so I closed it up and inserted it again and Windows detects the model when plugged in but doesn't mount anything or assign a drive letter because it can't be initialized. Tried in disk manager.
Basically nothing happens other than some mechanical whirring before a rest. The actuator only clicks about three times before resting and stops. At this point I do not want to plug it back in anymore until I fix it somehow.My first guess is that the actuator somehow got damaged from the fall, what else could it be? The motor? Something on the PCB? Again, it did not fall whilst plugged in.
I am not one of those ''bro just go to a recovery center bro spend 1000s of dollars bro'' so I am going to do this myself. What kind of head replacement tool do I need for a WD30NDZW and where can I acquire one? And does anyone have any other general, serious advice?
Buy an identical one and swap the platters
Wouldn't that require me to also change the firmware chip on the PCB?
Yes thats why it wont happen.
Now pitch it like I told you son. You do realize
That a very important thread died because of you
Its toast pitch it. Back up your shit next time
Uh huh. Go play with your Legos.
I hope you took it apart in a clean room with the right equipment and knowledge of that particular model because once opened you are completely fricked otherwise. IIRC some were filled with helium or other gas (under pressure? Vacuum?) which helps maintain the flying height of the heads which is probably measured in fairy c**t hairs; a dust particle the eye can't see could be catastrophic. My guess would be head to platter distance is wrong since they usually are parked upon power off and dropping it would be enough to frick that up. At least you didn't knock it off a table running like I did mine. Recovery services are your only option.
Yes my room is clean and I didn't touch the platters or anything, I opened it up with a number 6 torx screwdriver. The heads were parked in position when checking. It's not my intention to KEEP using it once fixed, I want to transfer the data and then ditch it.
Frick recovery services.
>Yes my room is clean
You have no clue what you're doing and have no hope of recovering the data yourself, retorrent your hentai movies and move on
Yes yes dust particles and alleged static electricity. Scare tactics and garbo by recovery centers to keep their business.
This thread was good bait while it lasted. Just backup your important shit.
I don't understand the vitriol to be honest.
It's your standard "I know more then the professionals and will scream at you if you don't believe me"
This is a DIY board, the question was simple, which tool to get, why would I care about comments that have nothing to do with DIY?
>which tool to get
here you go, have fun
https://www.ebay.com/itm/123972571363
you're not going to do it.
>made sure there were no dust or hairs on it
no you didn't you opened it and it is now covered in dust. you won't do it.
>I would just like to save it temporarily enough for me to extract the data.
you won't do it.
have fun swapping the platters or whatever moronic thing you plan to do then
Just use one of your backups.
...you DID have backups, right?
>I hope you took it apart in a clean room
>Yes my room is clean
Shitty 3TB HDDs are not helium filled.
>I am going to do this myself
As you don't care about your data and only want to learn by destroying stuff, do
and see what happen.
No, only insane rpm sas drives do any of this shit. OP is fine. Dust is a small concern but he's probably fine with what he's done.
Told you its toast little man
Platters as I've come to learn are actually quite durable (see Zoz DEFCON talk) but that doesn't make them any easier to work on. Data recovery is very fickle, and so far your approach is the low level turning it on and off again/cleaning it. I'd really just swallow your pride here and go fork over the cash for a professional restore before you scratch one of the platters or worse. You don't have to go to some Indian guy to do data recovery, if you're near NYC I can't imagine it would be difficult to get an appt with an enterprise recovery company (who deals with way more sensitive data than your repacks and furry porn stash).
Damn so far no one's actually answered my question regarding the specific head replacement tool needed to transplant the actuator.
Not cleaning it, just replacing a part which I believe is busted, if that doesn't work, I might look at the PCB, the platters are fine. I know which tool you need to replace platters but that requires firmware swap as well, which I think is doable as long as I have a compatible donor which will set me back 120 bucks or so which is what I already want to do for the actuator.
Well there's some shitbwith modern hard drives.
Like the characteristics of the heads were written to memory on the board. And some characteristics of the platters and track spacing and shit were too. So if you change the board or heads you might need to transplant a memory chip too and even then you might need to recalibrate some shit.
Do you have an inch pound torque driver? The cover needs to be put back on with the correct torque or the drive will warp and bind.
I don't have an inch pound torque driver I just screwed until I couldn't anymore without forcing it. They weren't on very tightly to begin with before opening it.
I never heard anything about recalibration after swapping the actuators... huh.
Can't wait to prove you wrong, anon.
1 ft. lb = 12 inch lbs. DUH
?si=IOvBb-A1e9J1QV2k
sorry you didn't do much research
Glhf
>Can't wait to prove you wrong, anon.
anything you don't understand must be easy...
>so I am going to do this myself.
no you're not.
Face it, your porn stash is gone. Take a moment to meditate, go outside, get some fresh air, and re-evaluate your life choices that got you to this point. Then consider touching some grass while you are out there before deciding whether or not you want to seek out and re-download it all again.
At this point it's not about recovering it or not I just want to do it for the experience and to see if I can do it, that alone would be cool. The stuff I had on there? Eh, I can probably get most of it again some way or another. It's just time consuming.
The drive is WD and it should work if I have the exact same donor drive...
I appreciate the banter but I really just would like to know if someone can tell me which head replacement tool I need and if they know a good source for it, I found a bunch but I don't know which one is useable for the head stack in this WD Elements Portable.
I am not bringing it to a center lol.
this worked for me
>get a recovery drive and a linux box
>spin up the dead one by assisting the platter with your hands upon energization
>dd that shit
This is a troll thread on par with the moron who wanted to do his own dental surgery and the PrepHole thread where one guy claimed he couldn't walk without falling over.
A platter swap outside of a professional environment was feasible back in like 2005 but you still needed something like a fume hood to create a dust free environment. Modern drives are basically toast unless the only issue is the control pcb. You are stupid and your drive is fricked
i love how the first thing he did after it stopped working was opening it up
probably spun a platter with his dirty fingers as his nose dripped
No lol, I don't touch the platters, I made sure there were no dust or hairs on it, all I wanted to see was if the actuator had somehow been knocked out of its ramp and perhaps that would've been an easy fix long enough for me to backup the data and ditch the hdd.
I didn't finger any of the parts inside. I don't think I should swap the platters either, even if I build my own cleanroom, I'm still confident it's the actuator that somehow broke, all I can do is swap it out with a donor one but I need to know where I can get a proper head comb for this particular model, I think it's a triple platter stack with four heads.
Useless.
I'm not looking to swap the platters, just the actuator/head arm.
I made mistakes.
I like how for a DIY board, a lot of anons here seem to be debbie downers and quick to ditch it or tell me to go to a center. Talk about defeatism. I appreciate the odd few actual discourse points.
''Oh it's fricked'' no shit it's fricked, I would just like to save it temporarily enough for me to extract the data.
>gives exact device needed for data recovery
>
.
another trash thread
if you dont get the platter up to speed the arms will never behave.
>I'm still confident it's the actuator that somehow broke, all I can do is swap it out with a donor one
it will be physically impossible for you to remove the arm and then place a new one in so that it lines up perfectly without a couple thousand dollars worth of equipment
are you on the spectrum? no normal human can be this in denial about a topic they have no clue about
Louis Rossman was his name. Swapping platters was his game.
Also, take your meds.
What equipment bro have you even seen videos of people doing it in their own homes with success? Like what're you, sausage fingered or something?
Looking at simple head combs to hold the arms in place. They range from 20 to 80 bucks per piece, it seems companies tend to sell a whole bunch of them in a set and they range around 150 up to fricking 400 dollars, if anything, that's a scam too.
All this ''opening up a HDD will literally destroy it!'' is cringe and I don't know why people still fall for this, DRC shills I guess, afraid to lose their income if people DIY it, reading off of data recovery center sites like teleprompters.
No people just have a little bit of knowledge, but no practical experience. I’ve fixed a few drives in my life. I’m bummed now because I copied my main porn drive to a new encrypted drive. The old drive failed, and for some reason new drive isn’t decrypting. Tried to do a head swap without those holders and fricked it up.
>big hard drive corp is just after your monies!!
When off some HDDs park the read/write heads away from the platters, unfortunately a drop can flex them.
you destroyed the platters the second you popped the lid
youre an idiot who has no fricking clue. hdds are NOT sealed. the dust flings off the platter. they can run temporarily foe recovery purposes uncapped in my living room. ask me how i know.
hard drive go brrrrrrrr
Google wd 3 clicks
Btw if you do a head swap buy one of those stupid holders they sell for 100. I didn’t and I regret it.
OP here, fixed, now I have nice coaster
check the drive is getting enough power. i had one on the shelf i couldnt fix but wouldnt bin it. turned out a switch mode psu went low current and couldnt feed it. i changed psu and put hd back. all working
Bro if you dropped your HDD it probably didnt have anything important anyways.
What would you be doing with a disconnected HDD anyways.
>look, i have a pile of sawdust, and all i'm asking for is what machine will turn it into a fully constructed house?
>i'm not here to be told it can't happen. i know it can happen. obviously the entire construction industry is a globohomosexual scam that makes you believe this can't happen.
>just send me a link to the fricking tool that builds houses out of sawdust before my sawdust goes bad. this IS PrepHole isn't it? literally just don't post if you're not going to tell me what machine to buy on amazon.
>also it needs to be under $50, i'm on a budget. make sure it can do barn style doors in the bedroom too, please.
Hey man, we got billion dollar cold war bunkers posting here and industrial robot dildo actuators. Don't be knocking PrepHole, now what can I do with like 200 sun rotted 5 gallon buckets?
The owner did not build the cold war bunker. Those threads are for severe autspergies to dream of tendieshelters where they can hide in Mummy Gaia's earthen uterus.
The desperate fantasy of eartholes is so severe there are daily threads by anons too stupid to know there are daily threads, but they don't build shit and you don't either.
>The owner did not build the cold war bunker.
And he posted enough pics to tell us he now owned a huge damp basement out in nowhere. The locals invented a fantasy where he was living the life and the government made him stop posting because of national security or some other nonsense, when the reality is he stopped posting because his dream was actually a nightmare.
Having some time in military bunkers I can infer it's not at all a nightmare, but unless one is wealthy and has specific desires like isolating their vehicle collection etc something that large is a bit much. OTOH a bunker build HAS style with a Wonder Arch style spall liner and the usual steel doors is quite nice to fix fighters in and I'd be delighted to own one as it would fit everything I do and drive with room to spare.
The problem with PrepHole is bunkertards who do not personally build things are mental children. They could actually have useful structures but they crave burial ritual as if it were not punitively limiting. They are not serious people so they never do it.
What pisses me off is people actually engage in a relatively helpful way with these moronic posts. But when you ask a serious question with realistic expectations you get meme responses or radio silence. This board can be cancer.
Whack it on the side as it powers on. The skinny side, not the top. If it works, back up your shit immediately.
OP already fricked the drive beyond repair by opening it and poking around.
But I can corroborate this: I have had this work. Sometimes the read/write head has a bit of trouble unparking on powerup and needs a little bit of kinetic assistance, but otherwise works fine until it parks and shuts off again. I had a drive like this that kept working fine for like 7 years further, as long as I gave it a sturdy flick on the side when I booted my system up and didn't let it spin down on inactivity.
>upon opening
You made my day op
The most PrepHole solution is to shine a powerful light on the disk thru a magnifying glass and read off the high or low magnetism cells going clockwise from the inner right to the outside.
Isn't there a piezo shock sensor on the PCB? They generate voltage when dropped even if the drive is off, so there might be a parameter/flag preventing spin-up.