Hello friends,

I moved my PC setup around and made the stupid mistake of connecting the incorrect adapter to my (then) external hard drive.

I got my system on and was messing around on the other side of the room when it smelt like something was burning and I turned everything off, once I couldn't find the source, I slowly started turning things on again and realized my 4TB WD My Book was no longer being read by my PC and for a brief period saw smoke coming out.

I finally realized I was using a 50VOLT PSU for my drive instead of the 12WATT PSU it came with, but the damage has been done. I tried using the correct PSU but the power light wouldn't come on anymore.

I extracted the hard drive from its case and tried directly connecting to my PC PSU with sata but had no luck, it has no signs of life when my PC posts and looking in the BIOS, it has no indication that a hard drive is connected to the sata slot. I'm guessing that the PCB is fried.
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is there anything I can do to the PCB to allow me to power up the drive and transfer some data?
I haven't unscrewed the PCB off the hard drive yet because I'm not sure what I'd even do once that's done... I've heard that you could pull out the diode near the power connector to get it running for a limited time...?

Money is tight as of now, sadly it's not an option to send it to a professional in the immediate future.
The hard drive itself can rot for all I care, but it really is in my interest to get some stuff off there (only ~3gb worth) so it doesn't need to work for long.

Thank you for your time!
appreciate any help regarding this

Upload detailed photos of both sides of each PCB (HDD PCB and USB-SATA bridge PCB).

Be prepared for this:

Catastrophic failures in Western Digital PCBs:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=2169

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

When you do get around to accessing your data (with @fzabkars help) you might find that the data was encrypted through the USB bridge board (depending on age of the unit). There are ways around this also.

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Side 1 HDD PCB:


Side 2 HDD PCB /w buffer:


Side 2 HDD PCB w/o buffer:


Side 2 HDD PCB showing burn area:

I drew a line connecting the burn, the material is discolored slightly on it's an entire edge but the source of the burning is right there.


Side 1 USB-SATA bridge PCB


Side 2 USB-SATA bridge PCB


Thank you
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I see, thank you. The drive was bought in 2015. If I can get the HDD reading on my PC I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

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Thank you for the insight, what do you make of the situation now that the photos are available?

So I've gone ahead and used a multimeter to verify that D4 TVS was shorted and removed it, now the D4 pads on the PCB give me a healthy reading

Sadly this did not allow me to connect via internal PC PSU and SATA, there is still no spin on power-up. I've read from fzabkars' great posts that sometimes the zero-ohm resistors sometimes needs to be jumped but I'm not sure where that's located on my PCB or how to do it.

I did some reading on the USB-SATA bridge PCB and both U5 and U4 have visible burns (also visible in the picture) but U5 still reads as a healthy diode, but U4 top 4 pins (where the burn is visible) reads shorted, 0.03. Contemplating snipping that out to see if power can start to be supplied via the USB unit, but I feel like I'm missing a step.

Thanks

R60 (zero-ohm resistor) on the HDD PCB is probably open circuit. If so, you can bridge it with a blob of solder, as long as there is no other damage. This is one PCB where WD's protection circuitry has a good chance of working.

The USB-SATA bridge board has a damaged 5V regulator (U5) and a damaged MOSFET power switch (U4). IMO it would be easier for you to replace this PCB. (There is a potential zero-cost workaround, but you would need tech skills to implement it.) Alternatively, you could use a free tool ("reallymine") to decrypt the HDD directly via SATA.

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1488

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

When you say bridge R60 with a blob of solder, do you mean something like this with the blob running from R60 to R43?

Also is there any specific type of solder I should use or does it not matter?

Alrighty I'll put the USB bridge out of sight for now, thank you for the link if I can get the drive reading by my PC SATA I'll explore my options on that then.

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Thank you much for the links and info, I'm hoping I can make this a simple fix with my current PCB, but once I've exhausted trying to get the OG working I'll start planning finding a donor PCB.

I'm not averse to soldering, I've redone the electronics on a guitar a few times, we'll see.

When you say bridge R60 with a blob of solder, do you mean something like this with the blob running from R60 to R43?
ect: [R60]-solder-[R43]
Also is there any specific type of solder I should use or does it not matter?

Alrighty I'll put the USB bridge out of sight for now, thank you for the link if I can get the drive reading by my PC SATA I'll explore my options on that then.

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Thank you much for the links and info, I'm hoping I can make this a simple fix with my current PCB, but once I've exhausted trying to get the OG working I'll start planning finding a donor PCB.

I'm not averse to soldering, I've redone the electronics on a guitar a few times, we'll see.