The 9 year old WD5000AAJS drive on my PC died suddenly. After checking it out, I found the D4 diode on the PCB had shorted out. After removing the diode from the board, I attached it to a USB/SATA adapter. It powered up, and my PC was able to recognize it. (NOTE: I did not boot from the old drive. I have installed a new WD Blue 1TB HDD on the PC w/ a new copy of Win10 on it). When I saw that it was running and recognized, I shut it back down, as I wasn’t ready to remove any of the files that I wanted to get from it. (The only files I really want from it are the Docs, Downloads, Desktop, and Pics folders). My question is this. What would be the best, safest way to get files from the old drive? Should I copy or clone the drive and get the files from there? Run it with the USB/SATA adapter and do it? Or install and run it as a 2nd. HDD on the PC? With the D4 diode removed, I’m not sure how long it’ll run, or what problems may arise, so I’m looking towards the fastest and safest way to do this. Thanks in advance for any help. Appreciate it!
Hi,
If the drive is accessible, The drive will show up under the computer’s file explorer as a removable storage drive and you can transfer data to the drive using copy/paste or drag/drop method.
The D4 diode protects from surges. So, assuming that you don’t get another surge, you should be safe to quickly copy your files off.
As for methods, that will depend on how much data there is on the drive and if there are any bad sectors. I find that Roadkil’s Unstoppable Copier is a great free tool to copy data from one drive to another, as it won’t quit on an error and shows a log to help you quickly identify any files that didn’t/couldn’t be copied over.
Hi. It did show up, and I was able to copy what I wanted on to another drive. Thx for the help.
Thx for the info. Was able to get the info I needed off of it before any other problem arose. The old drive is ready to be a boat anchor now. lol Thx again.
