WD5000BPVT
I was sitting at my desk doing some paperwork, and looked up at the laptop monitor. There was snow on the screen, then the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), and it shut off. When I went to restart, I got the dreaded media failure. I purchased a SATA to USB adapter and tried that. I downloaded WD Data Lifeguard and it didn’t recognize it, Win7 Disk Management doesn’t recognize it.
I’ve tried this drive on 3 different computers (the original Gateway Laptop (Win7), a HP laptop (WinXP), and a Dell desktop (WinXP)) with the same results. Upon further inspection, WinXP Device Manager recognizes the drive/serial number briefly when the drive is turned back on. Then it completely disappears, or reads ‘USB drive’. What is that a sign of?? Is the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) bad (there’s no visual damage)?
I bought a cheap Ebay identical model and swapped PCBs (the PCBs are vastly different–Rev A vs. P1). That obviously didn’t do any good, except have the head click against the spindle (at least it’s not stuck) several times.
It was backed up 2 months ago, but it would be nice if I could save two months of work documents, and I’m not paying $1000+ to restore the data. Is it worth finding a similar PCB, or any other desperate measures I can take?
Data Lifeguard reports USB, 0 capacity, and a question mark under SMART Status (or doesn’t recognize it at all). I’ve tried Partition Magic booting from a USB drive, that didn’t recognize it. There’s no unusual noise from the unit, I can hear the head move briefly when plugged in, then only the platters spinning. Yes, the SATA cables work fine with the other identical drive. The laptop has never left home (I use an old laptop on-the-road), never abused, etc. I’m sure I’ve moved the laptop on occasion in the past with the drive spinning (at ~5400 RPM), but who doesn’t do that? It was sitting on my desk and just crashed out of nowhere, it’s 10 months old. The fact that Win7 Device Manager recognizes the serial/model number one minute, and not the next is strange. Does that mean it’s the PCB/voltage spike, or could it be the platter was damaged in the recent past?
