USB to SATA WD 2060-771817-001

[BenFranske]

I am trying to pull some data off a WD drive with a physically damaged MicroUSB port. Ideally I'd like to relpace the MicroUSB PCB to a standard SATA PCB which it looks has been done by others for these small WD drives.

The existing PCB is a 2060-771817-001 on a WD5000BMVV-11SXZS2 drive.

It looks to me like the WD771812 might be a compatible SATA PCB, can anyone confirm that?

Thanks!
-Ben

[ShaneWard]

From what I understand the board should already have SATA connections leading from the bridge chip to the main MCU could you upload an image of the PCB board? someone here should know the connections you can use to make a SATA connection without buying a whole new board.

[pcimage]

If you do manage to wire it up to SATA, you'll probably have encrypted data.

[BenFranske]

Here are front and back images of the PCB.

Back:

Front:

It's just a damaged USB port so if I was going to use the existing PCB I would probably just remove the existing USB port and solder on wire leads to that location rather than try and tap the SATA bus before the bridge. I just think it might be more time effective to swap the board for a SATA board than to go through the hassle of trying that.

Thanks!
-Ben

[MindMergepk]

If you do manage to wire it up to SATA, you'll probably have encrypted data.

+1

[BenFranske]

Is there a good reason that WD is encrypting data on drives that do not even advertise it as a feature?

[ShaneWard]

No, they just do it for the fun of it!!!!!!!!!! Very annoying!

[BenFranske]

So basically, even if I go through the trouble of swapping the board and the BIOS/Firmware ICs I'll be left with encrypted, and thus useless, data? That's super annoying. I guess that I'll be working on replacing the microUSB on this board then.

[data-medics]

Yes it will be encrypted in 95% of cases (strangely there have been a few showing up lately that weren't encrypted).

You can decrypt using a USB bridge from a My Book that uses the same encryption chip provided that you clone the data onto a drive of the same LBA size (or know how to set max LBA to match). I'm pretty sure you'll need board number 2061-705094-001 for that one. Should be easy enough to find on ebay.

[ddrecovery]

Did anyone manage to find a matching SATA board for this drive. Its not on Ace Labs new list. MCU is 88i9146.

[fzabkar]

ISTM that you should be searching for a PCB with the same MCU and motor controller (Nautilus):

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=nauti ... J2%22+2060

How about this one (2060-771820-000 REV A)?

http://ep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-144375849714 ... 2601-1.gif

[ddrecovery]

Hey, fzabker: I was just writing this as your reply came through. I did find this exact board in my donors and it is a good match. This was from a WD5000BPVT. Thanks for the reply.

[fzabkar]

You can decrypt using a USB bridge from a My Book that uses the same encryption chip provided that you clone the data onto a drive of the same LBA size (or know how to set max LBA to match).

The large capacity My Books (3TB+) are configured with 4KB sectoring, so I'm wondering whether this might cause a problem. WD provides a "formatting" utility which converts between 4096 and 512 byte sector sizes, so I suspect that this would set a flag in the bridge firmware.

[fzabkar]

Hey, fzabker: I was just writing this as your reply came through. I did find this exact board in my donors and it is a good match. This was from a WD5000BPVT. Thanks for the reply.

Actually, it was islamm3rouf who answered your qestion. :-)

[ddrecovery]

Well it kind of was but he mentions 1814 as the USB board which was confusing. My (and the original posters) boards are 1817. So wanted to make sure. He could have also been talking about the USB bridge for decryption. Many thanks for keeping me on my toes....