I do not hear it spin up. Sound was not that good. Does it indeed spin up? Do you have a good working drive to compare?

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It feels like spinning up... but after the sound stops the gforce stops and it spins down. Spare? Not the same model...

If your data is important contact with a Pro, because your hard disk drive neesd clean room.
platter and/or spindle are jammed

contact local pro

Hi, i have the same HDD, and i managed to rescue data from it. I removed 4 capacitors to disable controler, and connect it to external SATA. Then Win recognized HDD and i was able to extract data with tool "Get Data Back" it was slow but i have patience.

I put vent to cool it, because HDD was getting hot.

No encryption?

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Elements?

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don't all integrated USB port on WD laptop drives have encryption. I have yet to see one that did not. Not sure how he got data from the bypass

AIUI, Elements drives are not encrypted:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25627

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Whats the full model number?

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I know some of the desktop elements did not have encryption, but the laptop ones always seemed to have it. Maybe i just never saw one. but every integrated USB PCB from WD has always been encrypted for me, and I have seen hundreds of them over the last year.

They are uncommon but do exist. I had one this week (WD2500BMVU-11A04S0).

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good to know, thanks

I've had a couple of 1tb elements drives that were not encrypted too.

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I thought that one of the characteristic differences between Elements and Essentials models is that the latter are encrypted whereas the former are not.

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Hope this tread is alive.

I have an WD Elements 500gb USB WD5000BMVV and hope you guys can help me.

The disk is recognized in Windows but says it needs initialization. So iv tried to rewrite the MBR but every software iv tried says cant read or write protected. Is this a connector problem perhaps? Do i need to re-solder it or?

Thanks

It is not uncommon when adding a new drive; whether it be formatted or not; to need to be initialized by windows.
Generally I just press Yes and from that point on Windows can work with it from within Disk Management.

It is not uncommon when adding a new drive; whether it be formatted or not; to need to be initialized by windows.
Generally I just press Yes and from that point on Windows can work with it from within Disk Management.

Yes, i know,but this one gets Write Protected Error

And the light is always on and disk is spinning

Have you tried the "attrib disk clear readonly" for that volume from within diskpart?

Another solution to try is to disable write caching on the usb hdd in device manager.
You can choose in the disk properties for optimize for quick removal or optimize for performance. CHOOSE optimize for quick removal.