WD800 Caviar HDD stopped working

[ben1990]

Hey guys first time poster, I have a western digital 80GB HDD, and stupid me removed the master/slave jumper while the drive was still connected to the power and IDE, and about 2 second after removing the jumper, the drive stopped spinning.
This cant be good.
I have bought a drive off of eBay for $38 to try swapping the board from, but i dont know the firmware version of it and that. I will be receiving the drive sometime next week.
I noticed one of the chips on the board got extremely hot (you could smell it) after removing the jumper, so i unhooked the power quite quickly. I tried the freezer trick to no avail.

Could anyone describe to me what actually happened?
The computer still recognises the drive, but as a 1334GB drive or something, instead of 80GB, meaning something has definately been damaged.

Anyway, any help appreciated
Thanks
-Ben

 

[wahnula]

...removed the master/slave jumper while the drive was still connected to the power and IDE...

Well you do get some style points for creativity and originality, try as I might I can't envision WHY this would come to pass, no matter as what's done is done.

What actually happened is hard to say, as changing the jumpers on a live drive is not your everyday hardware problem scenario .

I would check and make sure there is no damage to the M/B's IDE controller. What you did was essentially scramble the IDE identity of the drive, and why that would result in a chip burnout I have no idea, unless it was collateral damage from some other event, like accidentally shorting across some traces on the PCB.

The freezer trick is only for faulty mechanical components,as freezing makes metals contract and possibly allows movement of swollen, stuck parts.

You can chalk this one up to experience, I am sure you will NEVER handle a live HDD again! Good luck with the new PCB, mybe someone else has an idea WHY the chip smoked.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[kjv1611]

I dunno, but maybe some day, I might hook up some old junkie ones, and change the jumpers just to see what happens! Of course, that'll be with an old junkie board, CPU, etc.

Note to self: It is ALSO not good to remove jumper from hard drive while computer is running.

Thanks for sharing! [LOL]

I won't delve into my "super glue" incident years ago.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[vacunita]

If I where to take a guess: is it shorted out when you moved the jumper. What the jumper basically does is actually short to pins together, that tells the drive what position it is in. Of course when you move it, and current was passing through, it suddenly stopped passing then resumed passing again, the board is not really equipped to handle power surges like that, so t burns out somewhere. Hopefully it was only the PCB or controller board that got fired, and replacing it will solve your issue long enough to get the data off.

Now as wahnula said, why on earth would you tamper with a live hard drive. Let alone try to remove anything from it while its still on? And what possessed you to remove a jumper when it was running?

People need to learn that hard drives are sensitive equipment. Tampering with them even while they are off, can yield unwanted results, now you know what what can happen if they are on and running when you decide muck around with them.


----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Prydonian]

KJV611....

You CAN'T leave us hanging like that... Now you HAVE to tell the story about the Super Glue incident!!!

Mike, The IT Guy



If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, thank a veteran!

 

[wahnula]

Yeah kjv1611...inquiring minds want to know...unless you're waiting for the movie deal.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[wahnula]

...or it involved a jealous wife

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[ben1990]

hey guys i replaced the board with the one from the HDD i bought on eBay (how good was this, they were built 2 days apart), and its working fine now.

Oh and one of the chips HAD fried, big nice burn hole in one of them, i will take a pic of it and post it later on.

Thanks for all your help, and yeah, it will be getting turned off in the future prior to stuffing around with it

 

[wahnula]

Good job ben1990

We especially appreciate it when posters update their posts and let everyone know what did/did not work. You're gonna be just fine!

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[vacunita]

Glad you got it working. And I agree its nice when poster let us know how everything worked out. Not for us but for future posters that might be in the same boat.


In the immortal words of an 80's philosopher group, Now you know, and knowing... is half the battle.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.