The WD Black has failed, and the description is precise: it "just spins up, clicks a few times and spins down". The family photographs on it are only partly backed up. He also mentions "another identical drive bought at the same time that can be used for spares if necessary" and asks how to proceed. That second drive is a better offer than most people realise, and it is worth explaining why rather than simply accepting it. Donor parts have to match far more closely than the model number on the label — same family, same firmware revision, compatible head map — and two drives bought together from the same batch stand a much better chance of matching than one sourced online a decade later.
| Media | A Western Digital Black 4TB that spins up, clicks a few times and spins down, holding family photographs with only a partial backup elsewhere. |
| Reported situation | WD Black 4TB · failed · spins up, clicks a few times, spins down · family photographs, partial backup only · owner has an identical drive bought at the same time and offers it for spares · asks how to proceed. |
| Fault class | Head fault — the drive reaches speed, the heads fail to read, and the firmware parks and powers down rather than continuing. Photographs intact on the platters; further power is the hazard. A correctly matched donor head assembly is required. |
| Equipment used | Not powered further once the cycle was described · measured on a current-limited bench supply, the spin-up, click and spin-down sequence characterised · opened under a laminar-flow hood, looked over under stereo magnification, a donor head set fitted from a properly matched donor — the owner's identical drive assessed for suitability first — and the alignment set · imaged using DeepSpar over a PC-3000 UDMA, the photographs checked by rendering. |
The full cycle is the diagnosis. Spin up, click a few times, spin down: the platters reach speed, the heads are loaded, they fail to find the servo pattern, and after its allotted attempts the firmware parks the heads and cuts the motor. It is an orderly failure, and in a small way a merciful one, because a drive that shuts itself down is doing less damage than one that grinds on indefinitely.
Now the donor question, since he raised it and it is the most useful thing here. A head assembly is not a generic part. It has to come from a drive of the same family and generation, with a compatible firmware revision and the same head configuration, and even then the adaptive data on the original board has to stay with the original drive. This is why buying 'the same model' online so often fails: manufacturers revise internal designs continually while keeping the model number on the label unchanged. A drive bought at the same time as the failed one, from what was very probably the same production batch, is a much stronger candidate — not a certainty, but the best starting point a customer can offer.
It will still be assessed rather than assumed, and if it does not match, a proper donor is sourced instead. Meanwhile the practical answer to 'how should I proceed' is short: keep both drives switched off, do not test the good one by copying anything onto it, and send them together. And when the photographs come back, the partial backup is the thing to fix — this whole enquiry exists because one copy of some pictures was the only copy.
It was not powered further; the described cycle had already given us the fault. On a current-limited bench supply the spin-up, click and spin-down sequence was characterised, then the drive was opened beneath laminar flow and examined under a stereo microscope. The customer's identical drive was assessed for donor suitability against family, firmware revision and head configuration before anything was taken from it. Matched donor heads were fitted, alignment set, and imaging ran on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA, with the photographs rendered before they went to fresh media.
Head assembly replaced under laminar flow, the drive imaged and the family photographs recovered out onto fresh media, filling the gaps the partial backup had left. The diagnostic cost nothing; the figure that followed was fixed, written and inclusive of VAT. Because the drive had to be opened, half that figure was payable in advance against donor parts and clean-air time with the balance due only on a proven recovery — and supplying a genuinely suitable donor of his own kept the parts side of that quote down, which is not always the case but was here.
Leave it shut down. The cycle you are describing is a drive reaching speed, failing to read and parking itself, and each repetition puts non-reading heads back onto the surface your photographs are recorded on. If you happen to own an identical drive bought at the same time, do not swap parts between them yourself — but do say you have it, because a drive from the same batch is a far better donor candidate than the same model number bought second-hand years later, and it can genuinely reduce the parts element of a quote. Send both, switched off, packed so nothing moves. And treat the partial backup as the real lesson: one copy of anything is not a backup, it is a single point of failure with photographs on it.
Every case file here is written up from a real enquiry handled for households and businesses across Norwich and Norfolk, anonymised so that nobody is identifiable. Each sets out the reasoning behind the diagnosis and the method used on that particular fault, with the equipment named.
Intermittent is not lucky, it is a countdown — and the silence at the end of it is the motor or the heads
Two noises, two facts: the whir says the motor is fine, the click says the heads are not
Spinning is not the same as ready — a drive with damaged structures never gets as far as introducing itself
Diagnosis costs nothing and takes up to 2 working days from arrival, the quote is fixed in writing, and logical work runs no fix, no fee — start online or ring the freephone.