Hi guys,

I have a dead WD Passport and a noob to this whole hard drive recovery thing but I've been researching online. I've been reading and searching through the forum, however I'm unable to find similar symptoms to my drive online. Mine's a WD Passport model number: WD10TMVW-11ZSMS1.

When connecting my drive, it starts up, the spindle tries to read the platter, and then it stops spinning. I recorded a video of it here which shows the beginning before the platters stop completely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB9bgogOOSc

I use a Mac and the drive is Mac formatted. Disk utility is also not able to detect it. Is the problem due to bad heads? Or is it the PCB? Many thanks in advance!

Hi, your drive has bad read and write heads.
Take it to a data recovery company, if data is needed.

_________________
Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

This is a joke, right??

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

Hi, thanks for the input so far guys.... ermmm... why is it a joke pcimage? (because I opened up the hard drive?)

I agree she must be joking!!!

And now that you've opened the drive in your "clean room" bathroom you've knocked the chance of success down to about 2% and tripled the cost you'll be quoted when you bring it to a real professional.

This never was a DIY case. The time to ask questions is before you start screwing around, not after.

_________________
Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

I had the same problem months ago with a model like yours, hope you have better luck than me...

Haha, thanks for the sarcasm guys! As I said, I'm just a layman, yes, the drive is open, yes it is not a clean room

So, now that that's out of the way, what's the diagnosis? I'm just curious for my future reference. Even if I do 'take it to the pros' I'd at least like to know what the problem is and be better informed.

PS data-medics, you do realize that hddguru is not exactly THE go to page when one googles for problems with hard drives right? I had literally gone through tonnes of pages that suggested everything from freezing your hard drive to knocking it on the side (haha!) before I discovered the hddguru forum. All I did so far was to open it to see for myself because I suspected it could be a simple case of the spindle being stuck. Thanks for your input anyways!

Way to go Jubei. I had asked one question too but it looks like hddguru is completely infiltrated with this data recovery business salesmen. They discourage you on every step from doing anything. Of course they must or how they would get the business ?

Guys not every tom dick and harry is looking to recover data , there is something called learning through experiments. stop discouraging people. And yeh if people are serious about recovering data they know that experiments wont help.

This should be put as a sticky for all to see what NOT to do to a failing drive. There obviously was no learning or research here if the first instinct was to open the drive.

_________________
Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

The actual opening is not the main issue here, it's the running of the drive in an opened state, with the lid (and more importantly the head stack retaining screw) not in place.

So your statement of "All I did so far was....." is not entirely true is it?

Nothing is being "learned" here, apart from NOT what to do.

You see greedy DR pros touting for business (which isn't true, we don't really want botched drives like this) and we see DR pros stating the obvious that you've all but ruined the drive, but to stand any chance of recovery you need to STOP messing with the drive and send it to someone who knows what they're doing.

Hopefully someone who is thinking of doing what you've done will read this and STOP! Now that's what I call useful info for someone in your original position (I.e. a failed drive), to take advice FIRST and THEN act on said advice, or ignore it.

Sorry you've not been given the answers you WANT to hear, but unfortunately the truth isn't always what you WANT to hear

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!