Advice on recovery for a WD My Passport 2TB USB drive

[fzabkar]

We can consider this matter closed and a success. "Like watching a bad movie with an ending you can predict" -- I guess that means he predicted success even though the film wasn't worth watching. ;-)

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet as true"

Before ...

4 Start_Stop_Count -O--CK 100 100 000 - 91
9 Power_On_Hours -O--CK 100 100 000 - 102
12 Power_Cycle_Count -O--CK 100 100 000 - 65
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count -O--CK 200 200 000 - 52
193 Load_Cycle_Count -O--CK 200 200 000 - 54

After ...

4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 101
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 115
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 74
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 61
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 148

13 Power On Hours and 9 Power Cycles for a drive that was "catatonic" sounds fairly conclusive.

If the OP wants to play with the drive after he has completed the data recovery, we can provide irrefutable proof of the drive's status. This would involve dumping the drive's firmware modules, reading all 2TB of its capacity, and then dumping the modules again.

[jono-ats]

Congratulations! I under-estimated you.

[Spildit]

This means that now we can do the slow fix and read/write modules and ROM on WD drives that are USB only by HDDSuperTool bypassing the USB bridge chip.

Tested and working.

Take that, Acelabs !!!

[maximus]

This means that now we can do the slow fix and read/write modules and ROM on WD drives that are USB only by HDDSuperTool bypassing the USB bridge chip.

I would just like to point out that it depends on the USB bridge. Some will not process the vendor specific commands, and sometimes even react funny to regular commands. So it cannot be claimed to always work.

[Spildit]

This means that now we can do the slow fix and read/write modules and ROM on WD drives that are USB only by HDDSuperTool bypassing the USB bridge chip.

I would just like to point out that it depends on the USB bridge. Some will not process the vendor specific commands, and sometimes even react funny to regular commands. So it cannot be claimed to always work.

Sure !!!

In any case as long as the SA itself is not encrypted another sollution would be to adapt the USB PCB to SATA or buy a SATA PCB, apply the slow fix, revert to the original PCB to decrypt.

Also because even with WRONG ADAPTIVES it's possible to access SA (even in order to regen ROM), swaping PCB to SATA compatible PCB is enought to gain SA access and do the slow fix - no need to swap ROM !!!!

Regards.

[fzabkar]

From ddrescue's final report ...

(2000 GB) / (69,733 kB/s) = 7.97 hours

It would be nice to have a script that parsed mod01, identified all the module IDs and their sizes, and then retrieved each of them.

[maximus]

You mean like this?

PS The whole point of the scripting tool was so that OTHERS could write scripts to do the things they wanted

Attachments

wd_royl_dump_mod_all.txt

(7.14 KiB) Downloaded 941 times

[fzabkar]

Thanks very much. Yes, I have every intention of writing my own scripts for HDDSuperTool. I just need the occasional motivation.

[eng.mas]

That the Worthiest post, I ever read it for this kinda HDD

[radekm]

Oh my... it's working after the mod02/mod32 patch! The drive didn't go into a catatonic state, and I/O appears stable so far:

Code:

GNU ddrescue 1.17
About to copy 2000 GBytes from /dev/sdb to /dev/sdc
    Starting positions: infile = 0 B,  outfile = 0 B
    Copy block size: 128 sectors       Initial skip size: 128 sectors
Sector size: 512 Bytes

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
rescued:    16818 MB,  errsize:       0 B,  current rate:     119 MB/s
   ipos:    16818 MB,   errors:       0,    average rate:   98929 kB/s
   opos:    16818 MB,    time since last successful read:       0 s
Copying non-tried blocks...


/dev/sdb = origin drive (now patched)

/dev/sdc = destination drive (same capacity, slightly more LBAs, same sector size)

I'll let this run and see what the result is in the morning.

Seems like I have exactly the same issue with WD Elements WDBUZG0010BBK-03.
Slooooow detection under OS, lags, unable to copy, Imaging transfer ca. 60kB/s (44days to complete).
Did you have to replace te PCB or you were able to clear/fix 02 and 32 through USB ?

[Spildit]

HDDSuperTool can send VSC (vendor specific commands) to the drive by USB but it will only work with SOME USB/SATA bridge chips.

On this Thread @Koitsu was lucky and the HDDSuperTool was able to work with his drive BY USB.

You can try with yours but there is no guarantee that it will work over USB. It depends on the USB bridge chip.

Is your PCB USB only ?

[Spildit]

Seems like I have exactly the same issue with WD Elements WDBUZG0010BBK-03.
Slooooow detection under OS, lags, unable to copy, Imaging transfer ca. 60kB/s (44days to complete).
Did you have to replace te PCB or you were able to clear/fix 02 and 32 through USB ?

Discussion continued here :

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1500

Another success story for HDDSuperTool !

[eng.mas]

Well, I have a way to keep the drive "alive" for longer periods of time, but it does appear that reading certain LBA ranges cause the drive to go into a catatonic state. From my review of my data, I'm thinking these regions are calculable.

I believe this supports fzabkar's theory that there may be a specific head that's misbehaving or wonky. The drive has 4 platters with 8 logical/physical heads.

The bright side is that with my workaround, the successful I/O period is substantially longer, allowing me to try the mod02/mod32 patch without too much worry. I'll give that a shot. I'm hoping that might make the overall drive behaviour on failures/retries/etc. "better" for something like ddrescue.

Dear koitsu,,

I'v similar drive has the same problem, in your case you'r say " you have a way to keep the drive "alive" for longer periods of time,"
Can you tell me how you do that, to apply this in my case?

[eng.mas]

Well, I have a way to keep the drive "alive" for longer periods of time, but it does appear that reading certain LBA ranges cause the drive to go into a catatonic state. From my review of my data, I'm thinking these regions are calculable.

I believe this supports fzabkar's theory that there may be a specific head that's misbehaving or wonky. The drive has 4 platters with 8 logical/physical heads.

The bright side is that with my workaround, the successful I/O period is substantially longer, allowing me to try the mod02/mod32 patch without too much worry. I'll give that a shot. I'm hoping that might make the overall drive behaviour on failures/retries/etc. "better" for something like ddrescue.

Dear koitsu,,

I'v similar drive has the same problem, in your case you'r say " you have a way to keep the drive "alive" for longer periods of time,"
Can you tell me how you do that, to apply this in my case?

update
Today, I tried patches mod02 and mod32 by HDDsupertool, and I successed to patche it, it become more faseter

But when I tried to clone it by DDrescue, it read some sector and conn't read other, it's that indicate there is head sick?

[Spildit]

Most likely one of more of the heads are gone.

You will need proper tools to clone the drive with the good heads if that is the case and using USB interface doesn't help as well.

Did you try to do a reverse clone ?

On drives with the slow issue that i've clones (with hardware assisted cloning tool) ALL of them had patches of bad sectors on some point on the platter. Maybe you have hitted some bad sectors but maybe you can clone on reverse or skip the bad area.

If the problem is indeed with one or more heads either you live without the data on that platter or you have to send the drive in for data recovery to a proper data recovery firm (not a regular computer repair shop) with a proper aseptic hepa 100 room or laminar flow workbench.

[eng.mas]

Most likely one of more of the heads are gone.

You will need proper tools to clone the drive with the good heads if that is the case and using USB interface doesn't help as well.

Did you try to do a reverse clone ?

On drives with the slow issue that i've clones (with hardware assisted cloning tool) ALL of them had patches of bad sectors on some point on the platter. Maybe you have hitted some bad sectors but maybe you can clone on reverse or skip the bad area.

If the problem is indeed with one or more heads either you live without the data on that platter or you have to send the drive in for data recovery to a proper data recovery firm (not a regular computer repair shop) with a proper aseptic hepa 100 room or laminar flow workbench.

Now, I'm doning "forward" normal clone by DDrescue, and then, I'll try to make reverse clone, I hope that success
If that failed, I'll try to convert PCB to SATA, and image it by "DC", if give me the same results, there is a problem in one or more head, but if I can image it by SAtA PCB, the image will be encrypted, and I'll face new problme "How to decrypt the data"
because, I don't have the proper tool to decrypt the data.

[jermy]

If the problem is head(s), converting to SATA is not gonna help you
anyway, do not clone partial by USB and partial by SATA
regarding the encryption, upload a clear pic. of the PCB or write the chip marking

[eng.mas]

If the problem is head(s), converting to SATA is not gonna help you
anyway, do not clone partial by USB and partial by SATA
regarding the encryption, upload a clear pic. of the PCB or write the chip marking

If the problem is head(s), converting to SATA is not gonna help you
I know that it's give me the same result as well as the data will be encrypted.
I'll upload a pic tomorrow, the HDD is not beside me now

[eng.mas]

this is the pic for HDD and chip

[jermy]

if you convert to SATA, then clone it to another WD
1) make sure they have the same LBA's
2) 4061-705094 uses the same chip and able to decrypt the data