I'm not a DR guy, but if you can upload detailed photos of both sides of the PCB, I should be able to identify the SATA Tx/Rx signal pairs for you. Then you will be able to adapt a SATA cable to bypass the USB bridge chip on the PCB.
Having said that, you really haven't provided any information other than that the drive cannot be detected via USB.
Does the drive spin up, or attempt to spin up? Any buzzing, vibration?
If using Windows, can you see any device in Device Manager, Disk Management?
Can you detect the enclosure using Microsoft's UVCView?
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_ID ... ew.x86.exeIs there any 5V power getting to the PCB? Can you measure any voltages (2.5V, 3.3V ???) at any of the pins of the 12-pin header?
Can you see any cracks around the USB connector? WD users frequently report intermittent USB connections.
Is the bridge chip an Initio INIC-1607E? If so, then it has 128 bit AES encryption which may make your job difficult, if not impossible.
If you suspect that the bridge chip may be dead, disconnect the data or clock signal to the associated 8-pin serial EEPROM chip. The bridge chip should then identify itself with its own Product ID (INIC-1607E) and Vendor ID (Initio) rather than the one in the EEPROM.