Hi all,

My external usb3 drive has died. Luckily I don't have anything important on it but after reading on data recovery I am now hooked on the topic and want this to be my first try at it. The drive is recognized in windows but no drive letter is assigned anymore. Disk Management says is requires initialization, which I did attempt and it failed. I have run it through crystaldiskinfo and dmde and the results are below. dmde gave an I/O error. I also got an I/O error before when I ran it through Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. Also I took some audio of the sound the drive is making and uploaded it as a zip file here since the forum doesn't allow MP3's. It spins up and after a few seconds starts doing a sound and it never stops and doesn't spin down.

Also I took the USB board off and then the PCB Board off. I noticed that the head contacts looked dark so I cleaned them with an eraser. It didn't change anything though.

Any help and guidance will be greatly appreciated. I'm excited and ready to learn!

Hi there !!!

The drive most likely have bad sectors as you have value for pending sector count.

If this data is important you should consider the use of a professional data recovery firm as at this stage the recovery might not be that expensive.

There are chances that a head is gone or you have severe platter damage as well but on most cases it will be just a patch of bad sectors that can be "solved" by applying a firmware patch and imaging the drive to extract the data.

This should be a Sadle G6 drive.

If you remove the drive from the enclosure and if you plug the drive directly to your system motherboard by SATA can you scan the drive with MHDD/Victoria ? Can you access to any LBA ? If so a do-it-yourself aproach would require for you to apply the slow issue fix - http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php? ... t=60#p9874 and then clone the drive to a known working one using for example hddsuperclone. Then you would place the new drive on the old enclosure to take care of possible encryption and you should be good to go (to get the data back).

Also you might be "lucky" and you might be able to access the data on the drive using Linux after applying the mentioned patch.

As alternative if you don't want to use a full professional reputable firm you can use this service to patch your firmware and check your drive assuming there is no damage heads - https://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Digita ... 2919788728

Best regards and good luck.

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Oh ... and forget about re-using the drive. All the above notes are to be used for data recovery only.

Once the drive got "bad" there is no reliable way to get it working again as normal even if you were to run some factory tests like ARCO and Self-Scan ...

It's better to buy a new drive and move on if data is not required ....

Regards.

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Thank you very much for your help. I really want to donthis myself for two reasons:1) the data on this drive is not important. 2) im fascinated with data recovery and want to learn how to do it.

So first I need to connect the drive using SATA instead of USB. I was under the impression that I could only do this if I had the encryption key. Are you saying that all I have to do is remove the USB board and connect power and sata directly to my computer?

As for the slow issue fix. Do I need to purchase the WD-Marvel tool mentioned or can I just use the one you mentioned? Also I noticed some screenshots of a tool called firmware modulea spildit. Is this another tool you recommend? Did you write it? If so, where can I get it?

Hi all

To report back I removed the usb board and hooked up the broken drive directly to power and sata and upon bootup went into BIOS to confirm drive was recognized. After confirmation that drive was present and that my main drive was still first in the bootup order I exited BIOS and let the computer boot but it hung on the windows icon with the loading symbol. After waiting 5 mins when my normal bootup time is less than 20 secs thanks to my SSD main drive I turned off the PC. I unplugged the broken drive and windows gave me this bootup error:
https://www-groovypost-com.cdn.ampproje ... repair.png

Which after restarting again repaired itself.

What can I do to be able to boot with the broken drive connected via SATA and to avoid messing up my PC wih boot issues?

Thanks.

I was able to connect the bad drive on another PC I had running windows 7 x32. In Victoria 4.68b, the drive was recognized and SMART tested GOOD, much like CrystalDiskInfo, but when I ran a Test on the first 100,000 LBA's and it first gave an "recalibration..... Error" and then it went through the LBA's and they all gave "Error:ABRT". Does this mean the heads are completely dead? Should I open it to take a look? I will let it run though more LBA's but it's not looking good.

Any advice is truly appreciated. I can't find much on google for these errors. People state either FW problems or password, but the security states its "Frozen!".

Just a quick answer.

To get access to the firmware you can simply connect the drive by SATA. You only need that bridge board to DECRYPT the data.

If you don't need the data and want to re-use a drive that is in good condition you can always remove it from the enclosure and format it on windows with the drive conected to the system. Of course all data will be gone.

So you plug the drive by SATA as a normal SATA drive, you fix the firmware and you return the drive back to the enclosure to decrypt the data.

Other options is to clone the drive and use external tools to decrypt the image /clone like reallymine.

Alternative (free) to WDMarvel you can use Linux hddsupertool to apply the same slow issue fix patch :

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32501

Also if you are new to data recovery and you want to learn you can study this :

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=176

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You shoudln't let windows mount the broken drive !!!!

Lacking hardware like MRT, PC-3000, HRT, etc you should start windows and only then apply power to the drive when you do have your firmware tools already running.

Depending on motherboard you might need to place a working drive on the same port you are going to plug the damaged drive when your system power up .... Then replace the drive with the broken one.

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DO NOT OPEN THE DRIVE !!!!

Maybe SED is on or there is other stuff locking LBA access like translator not initializing, etc ...

First thing you should check is firmware.

Try to detect the drive with WDMarvel DEMO.

Try to read modules. If you see pending sectors on SMART most likely you have a slow issue and firmware needs to be patched.

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+1

Absolutely DO NOT open the drive!

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Thank you Spildit. I have not opened the drive!!! And more importantly, I have been able to read all 427 modules and the ROM. I have saved them all on my computer. My next step will be to apply the mod2 and mod32 fixes using HDDSuperTool. Do I have to do it via SATA or USB? Do you recommend any other free tool for writing to these modules?

The only "free" decent option to use is HDDSuperTool. It have a script to deal with the slow issue embeded on it so you don't even have to patch it by hand ....

Try it out !

If you did read the modules already use the option to do the slow fix patch using the same configuration (SATA OR USB) that you did use to read the module !

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Professor Spildit I am hooked on your amazing site. I have spent hours reading threads and learning about everything from platters to SA to SED and PCB ROM transfers to all the amazing apps out there, learning the purpose of each module and I just can't get enough. In the few days since I joined I have bookmarked over 30 topics and read probably 100's already. Thank you for this wonderful venue to share info and for being someone that actually shares a lot. I see a lot of recovery "experts" on here that are quick to dismiss noobs, like myself, and use fear to convince them to hire someone instead of trying to learn something and doing it themselves. Some have even attacked you or others for sharing knowledge. Totally ridiculous. Without the sharing of knowledge we would still be living in the dark ages most likely without even knowing how to harness fire!

Back to my project....I read the modules with a direct SATA connection, not a USB to SATA PCB Board(ROM transferred PCB board is what I mean here in case I'm not clear), and using WD Marvel Demo. Before attempting to write to them with HDDSuperTools, I just wanted to be sure I wouldn't be messing something up by writing the module with direct SATA when possibly it would require the USB board maybe for encryption or something.

If you are able to READ properly you will be able to WRITE properly as well.

Use the HDDSuperTool script to do the slow issue fix or buy a license of WDMarvel (it's very worth the price). Even if you don't want to pocket out the lifetime license you can buy 1 month license for $15 and you should be able to write back patched modules to the drive. In fact it will be a lot easier as you can apply the patch like on my guide using WDMarvel ....

If you go for the free option HDDSuperTool will safely apply the patch as well !

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Thanks for letting me know it was safe. I connected using direct SATA and downloaded the HDDSuperTools in a boot Linux CD on the HDDSuperTools website. Chose the drive and patched mod02 and mod32. Read the modules again afterwards and they are indeed patched in accordance with your slow issue fix link above. Mod02 had the section 00'ed out between the 4F 44 44 and the 01 00 28 64. Mod32 was 00'ed out as well.

Then I unplugged power to the drive and then replugged. Ran the Smart info from HDDSuperTools and I still have the same pending sector count and the drive is still doing the same sound I reported earlier. I can't clone it yet until I get the new drive in the mail. Any other test I can do to see if it will work? Will the slow issue fix come back if I try to read it prior to cloning?

I did a compare of the mod32 changes and it's pretty extensive. I'm attaching the before and after. Does it look ok?

The patched 32 looks ok but i can't understand why are you getting pending re-located sectors on S.M.A.R.T. ... Maybe the drive is reading copy 1 of the module ? Strange ...

If you do ear strange sounds most likely heads are damaged or platters are damaged and moving on with cloning might cause further damage. Please be aware of this. If data is important is time to consider "clean room work" done by a professional ...

Good luck.

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Spildit,

Attached you will see the CrystalDiscInfo after the mod. Any suggestions if this will be a problem for cloning or if I can test the drive prior to cloning somehow? Should I do an LBA read test with Victoria like before? Maybe on the 1st, last and middle 1%.

The data is not important to me...I'm here trying to learn with a drive and data that I don't care about.

Yes, try to see if you can scan any lba at all ...

Most likely the drive is using another copy of the RE-LO list.

At this point if you can't clone the drie it's the end for free do-it-yourself ...

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Spildit

I reread the mod02 and mod32 and did a hex compare against the patched versions and they were identical. Did another SMART info and indeed there are still pending reallocations. So the modules are slow issue fixed but as you state the drive seems to be looking somewhere else for the re-lo list. I also tried to read a few LBAs and got the same errors as before. I understand that I have made it to the end of the available free solutions. What are my options to continue learning and diagnosing but while not having to spend a lot of money. Im really enjoying this and would really like to solve it.