I have a WD10JMVW (USB Version). Spins up fine. When connected to PC it is detected as a WD Passport Ultra, but does not get a drive letter or size detected.

I used the new version of WDMarvel with USB support, and it kind of detects the drive. It knows it is there, but does not detect any kind of model, fw version, serial number etc. In fact each time it try to "detect drive" it show it as a different capacity ranging from 0GB to many thousands of GB. all ID info (firmware,serial, etc, is just nonsense. many times not even letters or numbers.)

No functions of WDMarvel seem to work with it. Reading Smart, Reading ROM, Reading Modules, Drive Info - They all fail.

My initial thought is to take the USB out of the mix and attach SATA data cables to it, but i wanted to put it out here for comment before i do that.

Is it possible that WDMarvel is just buggy over USB since it is a new feature? It seems like it gets even less information than even the device manager or WD SMartware (which gets the model and serial number)

is drive smartware locked ?

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How would i determine that in it's current state? Smartware does not obviously indicate that it is locked(or not locked for that matter).

if it is your drive, you should know if it is password protected or not ! if it is customer drive you can ask customer the same.

If drive is smartware locked it is a different story and you would Pro Help.

If drive is not smartware locked, than taking drive off from the box, it will still be a USB drive, means you need a compatible SATA PCB to make it work and even if you manage to succeed in this, you still have to deal with encryption.

I remember a while ago did some experiments on these passport drives, where no need to change it to SATA or opening the box is required, but for this things to work all heads of drive must be in good condition.

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Data Recovery Pakistan

Customer does not believe it is smartware locked. Unless it is by default, but he does not recall setting any sort of authentication on it.

Anyway, i am going to go ahead and get a SATA PCB to see if the situation improves.

Just to be clear
USB board - 771961-S01
Compatible Sata Board - 771959 000

Move u12 SPI flash from USB to SATA

Does this sound correct?

yes, this is correct.
I am sure you have some plan to deal with decryption afterwards.

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Data Recovery Pakistan

At this point, no firm plan, but it appears that the encryption for these WD SEDs has been compromised.

this seems promising https://github.com/andlabs/reallymine

What I'm not understanding at this point is, if the owner never password protected the device, would encryption still be in place?

If it's a smartware-enabled drive, the data is encrypted by default using a blank password key, so it's simple to change the key based on a set password rather than encrypt the whole drive sector-by-sector is the user chooses to set a password, rendering the data inaccessible without the new set password.

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I went ahead and did the sata conversion (soldering wires, not PCB swap yet)

It is detected but Ubuntu chops it down to 1.5Gbps almost immediately, and then cycles through an IO error, port reset, etc forever.

Ive seen the Sata speed thing with bad sata cables before, so i am wondering if cable length is an issue.
At this point i have it soldered via unshielded wires into a male sata connector, and then via a standard sata cable to the motherboard.

I suppose tomorrow i will try again with a more spec compliant setup and see how it goes.

Compatible, there is a difference with screws holes. 771960 - has no problem with this.

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Using super short wires didn't really help anything.

It was detected in bios, causes the computer to boot very slowly, and same I/O error and reseting cycle.

Im thinking bad head/heads. Anything else it could possibly be at this point?

Any way to test head function on these ones?

the only thing i have available is WDmarvel. I have a SPI programmer so i could manually edit the firmware via hex editor if that would be of any value. Although if it's anything like the Seagate firmwares there is checksums all over the place.

Well,
3 Screws Are Good to go with this pcb .The one on the motor contact and two on the heads

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Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Looks like no luck on reading firmware at all. Over Sata it just stalls the computer on boot until it eventually times out. WDMarvell does not detect it. Over USB it detects the internal usb bridge but is not communicating with the actual drive. WDMarvell just detects garbage. wont read ROM,RAM,SA.

at all worthwhile to get that SATA board? I have my doubts that the PCB itself is bad, but i suppose anything is possible.

any thoughts?

IMHO You jeopardizing your CLIENT's data, will be more honorable for you to have a real DR pro, the odds are against you just reading this thread it gives me a headache. If you want to learn have some test drives and mess with them no with CLIENT's data. very unfair... Just my 2cents. Cheers

I have never, ever known a bad PCB to cause this type of behaviour on this model.

I'm assuming the drive is spinning normally?

If so, then it's 90% likely to be FW related, 10% a bad head. IMHO of course

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Do these drives have a TTL/UART interface? That could go a long way to determining what is going on.

I must admit i am much more familiar with Seagate drives than WD.

they do

but assessment is done the same way you would do via SATA (ATA)

In this context, what is TTL/UART? I'm asking because I'm an absolute beginner on this stuff.

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"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin revisited

TTL Transistor to Transistor Logic.
UART Universal Asynchronous Receiver and Transmitter
you also have CMOS logic.

generally all referred to as serial connections. There are differences between them such as voltage they use.

So in this context, you would hook up a usb-serial converter. plug the USB into PC, run putty or (gasp) hyperterminal and wire it to pins on the Hard Drive. Plenty of examples if you search the forum.

some drives the serial port is locked meaning simply hooking up wont get you anywhere until you perform some kind of unlocking.

seagate 7200.11 drives you can just hook up and communicate with drive over serial.