Hard Drive not Spinning, maybe a motor issue

jollyroger09

Estimable
Jul 10, 2014
2
0
4,510
I have been researching my eyes out on recovering data from a failed hard drive. It is a Western Digital Scorpio 320GB. I have a USB to SATA cable that I use to hook up to the PC and Disk Management does not see to detect it. I can't hear anything spin up when plugged in. The only sound is a very faint clicking sound that seems to repeat every second. Against better advice I have opened the case and took a quick picture in my own little clean lab and after comparing to other drives online I can not tell if there is anything physically wrong with it. The platter does spin freely though and does not seem to stick at all.

Could this be a motor issue and if so how do I go about fixing it? I have tried the freezing option to no avail.
 
Solution
Hi, the way to repair your HDD, is to replace the PC board with another good PC board. On the board you have the controller for the HDD, some components on the board are defective and the HDD can't be detected.

jollyroger09

Estimable
Jul 10, 2014
2
0
4,510

The drive can become scratched if opened in an environment where there might be particulate and then attempted to run the disk again. You really need a clean lab that filters out these particulates. but lucky me I work for a university that has such a lab. YAY. So, I still need to know how to fix the motor. I have combed through a lot of sites with freezing and knocking. but nothing is stuck. and nobody tells you what to do if you actually have a clean lab. only that if you open it it wont work. I opened up two other drives to compare the inside and they both seem to work. any advice on spindle motors would be greatly appreciated.