Hi guys (einstein9, tawfeek_mokhtar, hddguy, ppumkin and BlackST)

Could u give me the password for "HDD.rar" file?

Thanks & Regards,

Alessandro Prianti

Sorry no.

Hi all
I've been following this post and I would like to know your opinion on this issue. The model is WD10TMVV-11TH7S1
The hard disk crashed to the ground, and does not work since then. The device manager detects it, but the hard drive could not initialize. 2 months later and without any hope, I decided to open it. and saw it was stuck on the surface.
I could remove it and now does what you see in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-55qa8h- ... e=youtu.be

What is your opinion? Thank you very much!

hello, i need to replace head, do anyone have to sell cheap?

or hdd alu casing only with head's?

First of all tell me what kind of utility you are using ? P3000 or something else
2ndly this is very Complicated process to recover smartware encrypted hard drive.
3rdly you need to have another donor hard drive to make it hot swap.

for complete process how to resolve this issue PM me.

Hdd have clicking noise, tryed all solutions posted here, but non work, so i opened hdd, 2 reading chips on head are broken, also broken part what carry head, so i needed a head and alu housing, to read data from disc's, also have i problem with wd blue scorpion, have clicking noise, any solutions?Do anyone have this parts, need read files for my work to college, please...?

Hi Everyone,

I've noticed this thread doing a search and noticed that you people here may be my only hope to get my very important data off of this worthless hard drive. I unfortunately didn't back up my data before it gave out on me

I've narrowed the problem down to the USB connector, the reason i say this is because the drive sometimes connects and mounts...but every other time it just powers up and spins...there is nothing physically wrong with the hard drive, i believe the USB connect on the PCB is not connecting the Tx/Rx pins successfully and i get those 3 dreaded flashes from the LED.

So my questions to you are. How difficult is it to remove the USB connector from the PCB...anyone have pictures of the process? Also what about the pinouts? i'm thinking of cutting my USB cable and soldering it directly to the PCB....just long enough to get off my important data then toss this thing in the trash once and for good. Will be the last time i purchase one of these.

Thanks for a quick response guys!

Hey Frank,

Can't PM yet, just signed up. Been through this thread a good 50 times since my WD Passport fell off the table whilst plugged in, only bout 30cm drop but won't show up. It actually did once after the fall, but shat it self quickly and is not recognized. Getting the blinking light and a little clicking. Anyway, where are you in Aus? Wanna have a go at it? Of course I'll pay for it, just hoping it's not gonna sting as much as the big recovery companies. Cheers.

Hello everyone,

I have my WD10TMVV-11A27S0 HDD is not anymore recognized by any OS. It was almost full and put data with a buggy program trough windows. Windows went faulty and since then, my HDD is not anymore recognized. I guess the drives and headers work well as the light turn on and the HDD sounds great. It just stops after several seconds and spins up again.

I did not use specific encryption WD program. Do you think that i can try to replace the PCB only?

Or would it be possible to pass-by the USB controller and use directly the SATA interface. Will the stream be encoded? Is there any software to decode? If i replace PCB, do you know how to get the encryption key back from faulty PCB and put it on the replacement one?

I saw some previous post about experiments, do you have more feedbacks about your test results?

Thanks a lot for your time and valuable advices.

Hey guys,

I have a WD10TMVV.
The micro usb that is soldered on to the PCB is damaged.
I am wondering whether I can replace that with a micro-b that I can get from the online store?



I noticed that the micro usb is a micro-b and it is different to what I see from the internet.
It has like a double decker thing going on. What is that black color, 2 holes thingy underneath the micro usb port?
Is that just to make the micro usb port higher so it could fit the casing?

Obviously the extra pins around the port remain a mystery. No idea what are those.
I am guessing those are some proprietary WD ports.

If I were to replace it the damaged micro usb port, what are the proper steps to do it?
Must I remove the hard disk from the PCB before any de-soldering/soldering work is done?

Thanks!
Venn.

WD10TMVV-11TK7S1. Detected by the BIOS and the OS as WD Elements 1023 with full capacity, but reported as write protected. Assuming this is not encrypted, will the SATA connection allow me to access the data?

that media write protected report = encrypted. Recently did a head swap on a WD 3.5 inch external with encryption. Imaged the drive 1 TB to 1.5 TB. Connecting the 1.5 TB without cuting the HPA down to 1 caused the "media write protected" error. It searches for encryption key at the end of the drive but the end is 500Gig further =) After i cut the HPA - data became immediately accessible.

Thank you. I don't really care about the drive itself (which is rather obvious, since it's already gone flaky), and the data in it is not worth the money a DR company has asked me to recover the data. So I'm willing to try the DIY way - at least I will learn something. Will you give any suggestion on how to investigate further? Is there anything I can read about it?

I thought Elements models were not encrypted. :?

Could you tell us the markings on the Initio bridge chip?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Frank might be right. I did a few head swaps on native usb wd 2.5 drives but imaged em in PC3K with USB interface on , so never had to play around converting it to SATA and so on. Not that many passed through our little shop. I am unfortunately not in the know at this point which ones are and which ones are not encrypted. ( I guess it would be on the website , but ima one of those lazy Russians, not the smart kind =) ) , However that 3.5 that i described was encrypted 100% and media write protect was the error untill it got HPA back to original size.

Post pictures here and as much info as u can on the drive. How it acts. If u can make a sound sample of it spinning up and initializing it would be cool as well.

Well , hold a sec =) Ninja edit =) Elements are 3.5 inch. I think a WD10TMVV-11TK7S1 drive comes in passport. Why ID as elements ? The plot thickens =)

Btw google WD Elements 1023 ull see some ppl having the issue on WD forum some even apparently resolved it =)

Man its finally feels like spring YAY!

Oh and quoting myself is cool. I think it says so in the Bible =) Day is done ima go home now. Ill peek in tomorrow see how this post is doing.

INIC-1607E

First off, I don't know the product name of this drive, but it looks exactly like this one:
http://www.amazon.it/dp/B003CFAZZ0/ref= ... oomcafe-21

The disk sounds perfectly normal to me. It spins, then a few clicks from the head, but nothing special. Eventually sits idling and all you can hear is the motor spinning. Recording is almost impossible, I'd need a stetoscope, as it's almost completely silent.
Upon connection to the USB ports, the activity LED flashes quickly 5 times I think, then stays solid for a few seconds, then flashes slowly 3 times, then solid again. Device manager (Win7 x64) and disk management detect it as 931,51 GB. As soon as I open diskmgmt.msc I'm asked to initialize the disk. I haven't tried (because I'd be moderately happy if I got the data back) but I suspect it would fail to do so. All other software I've tried report it as write protected and not initialized. HDTune reads "Elements 1023 (1000 GB)", reports SMART ok but fails to scan the disk sector by sector, each and every sector is quickly skipped because of read errors, until the 2500th read error is reached, at which point the scan halts. Notice the silly scanning speed. It only lasts a few seconds.

Pictures (a bit blurry, I only have my phone right now):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... 122016.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... 122017.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... 122018.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... 122019.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... 122020.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... 122021.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... 122022.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... 122023.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... 122024.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... 122025.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61719593/HD%20W ... magine.png

Sorry for the long list. Let me know if you'd like to know anything else.

I think encryption is present with this puppy. If smart trully reports good that = SA is read... The clicks u describe in the beginning is a unknown since i need to hear what u are saying. Clicks as in heads parking themselves or just calibration noise. Did the drive fall? Or was working 1 day and the next decided not to ?