questions on a dead drive

my parents hard drive just died all of a sudden and it doesn't want to get working no matter what we try.

i have heard that you can get the same drive and swap boards out.

1. can you do that?

2. if you can swap the boards does it have to be the exact same drive down to the model #? i can get the same capacity but the model numbers are a bit different. (ours is WD800JD the one i can get is WD800AAJS)

3. if swapping the board won't work can i build a clean room and take out the discs of the drive and move them to the new drive?


thanks for the help.

1. Yes

2. Yes. Try eBay, that's how I found a drive to do this.

3. Anything is possible, but you'd still need another of the same drive.

ok, might go ebay then.

now the one i have looks like this





can i use this one as a twin


there the same model number, WD800JD but the lids are different.

Can you still see the drive in windows or during start up? This is trying it in a different machine with a working os, and you can try a data recovery program.

no the drive wont show up on 3 different systems. i also tried it with ultimate boot cd for windows.

Spawn-Inc said:

ok, might go ebay then.

now the one i have looks like this


can i use this one as a twin


there the same model number, WD800JD but the lids are different.

Click to expand...

Nobody can say for sure if the board will work unless you get all the numbers matched, beyond the serial # and whatnot. Otherwise it's a crapshoot really. I tried to have a close build date as well.