WD1002FAEX dead,way to get data back

[thirdwish]

Hello, my most recent hdd buyed failed badly, and now it seems i'm gonna need to recuperate the data from it. As the title said it is a Western Digital Caviar Black series WD1002FAEX (1TB, sata, 64Mb cache, 7200rpm). I used this hdd only to store data on it, never installed OS (win 7 32bit) on it even if it's the best of all the disks i have, sometimes when using pc i noticed that my 2 partitions from that disk are gone and after couple of restarts and/or boots from some linux live cd have solved the problem and i can see them again in Windows Explorer, cannot explain but seems that mounting the disk in some linux live cd that i booted fixed the partitions visibility even in Windows.
Now it seems the drive is gone for good, cannot find it in bios neither can make use of linux live cd to fix the problem, the only thing i ask is a good advice reguarding the changing of PCB from another Caviar Black drive that seems close enough to be a good donor at least to try and recuperate my data. The other disk older and still working is a WD1001FALS (1TB, sata, 32MB cache, 7200rpm), the only differences between them seems to be the cache, the dead one have 64Mb and the good one have 32Mb, PCB's looks identical, i only need some confirmation from some1 who tryed such thing and worked without damaging the good PCB. Thanks in advance.

 

[popatim]

Unfortunately you do have a chance of damaging the good pcb. I have never swapped in anything but an identical pcb so I couldnt say what the odds are. Are you sure they are both 7200rpm drives? If you do proceed and it does work IMMEDIATELY get your data off the drive. You don't know how long its going to work for. So be ready to back it up before you begin.

Also, i'm sure you realize now that you should have your data backed up in several locations and not stored on just 1 drive. Hard lesson to learn... I use 3 locations plus an offsite but 1 other location plus an offsite is acceptible as a minimum.