WD2500JS with a burnt PCB, I got a donor disk so could I get my files back?

Hello,

I found this forum via Google, there was someone years ago with a problem close to mine. I tried some other forums but I don’t get any answers so that’s why I am going to try it here because that other guy fixed his problems!

I’m from Holland so there will be mistakes in my spelling.

I own a Western Digital WD2500JS. The disk was in my PC (I bought it 6 years ago). The PC died a long time ago and I bought a laptop. I also bought an External Box so I got all my files back that I had in the time of my PC. From that moment I placed all my files onto that disk and there was nothing on my laptop itself. I though that was the best idea because I take my laptop to college with me every day. A couple of weeks ago I was working on my laptop + External box and when I came back from dinner the External Box light didn’t burn anymore. The disk was dead. I took the disk out of the External Box and saw that a couple of components were burnt on the PCB. I bought the same Hard Disk with the same model number and switched the PCB’s. I put the disk back into the External Box and the disk was alive. I also heard that noise coming out of the laptop when you put in a USB device. But that was all he did, I couldn’t see the disk under ‘My Computer’. When I checked ‘Diskmanagement’ It shows a ‘unknown disk 1’ which is my disk because if I turn my disk off that one disappears. There its said that my disk is 7,46 GB (which must be 250GB). I can’t initialize the disk.

I also tried some programs but none could restore some information on the disk.

Does anyone know something I could try? Maybe some software or replacing some components from the PCB’s.

A picture from the burnt PCB:

So that square chip has some spot

and those 2 components beneath it are burnt

I hope someone could help me :smiley:

Thanks for reading my story!

I read something about the U12 chip. Is it an option to put the U12 chip from my old burnt PCB to my new PCB? I read about the chip but I don’t know what is does…

Hi normally on older drives you do not have to change the chip but I am not a pro at this. The person you want is fzabkar he knows a lot about pcb transfer so I would just be patient and wait until he answers.

I replaced the U12 chip today and it works!! Like nothing ever happened. I’m so happy :smileyvery-happy:

So thanks to all the people who replied in those other topics from years ago from people with the same problem with the same harddisk’s!