Maybe some chip swapping will be necessary. It depends on what is on your original board, and what is in the new one.

Also, have you tried to just read only the hdd directly connected to a normal computer ( not a notebook ) ?

Other : can you post a picture of the original board, in the state it is now ? Areas of importance are those around the usb connector with the damaged traces, and the R46 resistor frank pointed you at.

It's no good, that tiny thing the 2 middle prongs of the usb connector tracers run to is no longer there. It's physical missing smd parts now

Well, if the board is trashed you will have to try with the board you bought, and if that doesn´t work, send the drive with the original board to a data recovery pro.

Yeah plan of action is: try with new board as is, if that doesn't work, find out what smd chip/s need swapped(where I'll need yalls expertise) and if that don't work, give it back to friend and tell him he's worse off now than before, take it to a pro haha

What smd is at L1?

L1 looks like a common mode EMI suppression choke. Each coil should measure close to zero ohms.

High Speed USB Platform Design Guidelines:
http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/hs_usb_pdg_r1_0.pdf

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Something happened when messing with the old bridge board and D4 shorted out. I beleive it happened becuase the bridge board is missing the usb connector tracers pad and common mode choke.

The USB connector and choke would not have directly affected the 12V supply to the HDD. However, making and breaking the USB connection would have caused the HDD to start and stop, respectively. What voltage do you measure at the adapter?

The original diode would be a 600W type, eg SMBJ12A. Check that R64 still measures 0 ohms. If not, then check the motor controller IC for damage.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I beleive I checked all the resistors and the other diode and they were all the same as mentioned before,0.3ohms and 159 on D3, I'll check again. What am I looking for on the motorcontroller IC(obvious damage signs?) and which chip is that? Will a smaller resistance diode not be better than none at all?

If the resistor is OK, then you should be OK (apart from D4).

It's only when the resistor is open that the following happens:

Catastrophic failures in Western Digital PCBs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=1119

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Wow you know your stuff, amazing!! I really envy people who know a lot about anything. What's my best option with D4 being down, remove it. I have an old trash desktop computer I can try to pull the harddrive out and find a replacement?

1/ Find out why your adapter blew the diode and rectify the cause.

2/ Flow a blob of solder over R64 (to protect the drive from WD's bad "protection").

3/ Replace D4 (you can use an SMBJ12A or equivalent).

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Well what happened when it shorted out, I tried resoldering the old usb connector back on and I was wiggle it around while it was plugged into my computer and the PSU, and a usb over voltage surge warning popped up on the computer. Think you hit the nail on head when you guessed about the usb connector making and breaking connection possibly causing it. So okay, flow solder over R64, if I was to replace D4 would I have to de desolder that blob on R64?

Solder a blob over R64 regardless of whatever else you do. This will ensure that the next overvoltage cannot harm your drive. Do the same with R67 while you're at it.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

If you have already said pictures of the damage are unnecessary because it is damaged beyond repair, and you will try with the new bridge, please stop playing with the drive / old bridge while your friend still has a small chance of recovering his files.

If the diode measures shorted, **with everything unplugged from power ** just replace it and reflow the blob of solder @fzakbar spoke of. Then store all pieces in a box and waif for the new bridge to arrive. There are good chances it will not work also, but then your friend can take it along with the drive and the bad bridge to a specialized data recovery place and maybe they can recover his data somehow cheaper.

Okay, got the new bridge board, My computer recognized it but it opens up as a CD drive(smart ware) in my computer and in disk mgmt. Im scanning it with DMDE and its finding the files. Does this mean that I need to swap the 8 pin serial flash memory chip on the bridge board?

“Finding the files”?

Do you mean it’s finding the smartware files in the small partition, but not your data in the large (user data) partition?

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Post a picture of how Windows Disk Management is showing the disk / partitions.

No, it was finding files on the hard drive itself.

Another peice of information is that he used this on a Mac, but said he has plugged it into a windows computer last and was able to see the files but couldn't read/write to the drive. I don't understand how he could see the files in their intirety on a WINDOWS if it was formated to Mac?