[gordesky1]

So guys i was wondering i have 4 1TB Western Digital Black WD1001FALS which are 2008-2009 drives and about a year ago one of them seta ports got damage which just have the pins sticking out and i lost the plastic thing... And pretty much i been just siting the cable in there and it will work till it gets bump or vibration knocks it out..

Than i decided to just hot glue it cause i now use it in my main gaming pc in raid 0 setup which works for about a week or 2 or even more but the glue will just let go and either the drive wont show up or it will crash the pc...

Pretty much im getting tired of it.. And i was wondering and sense i have a extra backup 1TB Western Digital Black WD1001FALS drive just siting as a backup drive can i swap that board over to it?

 

[MightyMiroWD]

Hi @gordesky1!

You can try to do so if you want, but I won't recommend it. I'm not saying that not only because this is an unsupported and not recommended operation in general, but mostly because that the risk of damaging the drive further is too big and that the chance of finding an exact match of a PCB is really low due to the differences in firmware over the years.

I see that you have the same HDD unit, but the mentioned danger with the firmware could be harmful because it may have different settings for how to align the heads to the the tracks on the physical disk surface, and when it tries to write anything (which it will) it will result in all your data being obliterated.

What I'd suggest instead is to check if the drive is still under warranty, and in case it is to contact our support and see if an RMA could be arranged. Here are some links you can use for that:

Warranty status check - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=TLmmJO
Support - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Y9mLPv

Hope this helps and let me know how it went.

 

[latelesley]

Actually, if it is the same model of drive, there's a good chance it'll work. If you're a handy type of person, and confident at soldering, you could just whack on a new connector to the existing board.

http://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/3M/5622-6309-ML/?qs=Lu3apKW7jUiUnjc77k8p%252bA%3d%3d

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/10-Pcs-Per-Lot-7-15-Pin-Right-Angle-SMT-Male-Sata-Connector-For-2-5/32530716249.html?spm=2114.40010308.4.2.wdeWLG