I have a WD MyPassport 1.0TB external USB hard drive with a 2060-771801-002 Rev A board (more specs below). My end goal here is just to recover the data. Board appears to have some kind of water/chemical corrosion damage. Both U12 and U14 EEPROM chips are Winbond 25x20blnig 2MBit/256Kb chips. I was able to sucessfully backup the contents of the U12 ROM chip using a CH341A programmer w/ SOIC clmap, but not so much the U14, I think that one is nuked.

My plan was to get an identical board and program the U12 in-place on an identical board (same board #, same controller chip, SMOOTH chip, etc.) using the backup I'd made. Or, failing that (do these boards enable write protection for the winbond / PM25LD20 chips?) using my hot air rework station and swapping the U12.

My question is, After swapping the U12 chip onto an identical donor board (or repgrogramming it in-place), would the donor board's U14 chip be able to decrypt the data? Or would I need to get a compatible SATA board and decrypt with Reallymine? The "u14 dead" topic at https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34927 suggests that it may be possible to use a 771823 SATA board.

HD specs
WD10JMVW
Controller: 88I9346-TFJ2
SMOOTH: A21U599
EEPROM BIOS: U12 and U14 25x25blnig

If your data is important, then start telling the full story. What happened, drive behavior and why you think drive failure is related to pcb.
This will give you the best feedback to rescue your data.

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Digitalsupport Data Recovery
https://digitalsupport.dk

Agree, you need a proper diagnosis really. But at least you can narrow down the options....

Does the drive spin up?
Does it buzz or click?
Does it sound normal?

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

u14 isn't neccessary if you gonna use Sata analog pcb coz decryption key stored either in SA? and you have tool pc3k with DE.
In case if you use USB donor pcb , with not original U14 , key from this (u14)ROM almost probably update copy in SA, and you have a chance to mess everything.

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Angel Data Recovery

Yup I did the SATA swap, I was able to find the DEK thankfully due to default KEK being used. I think it's now just a matter of making an image and decrypting with that key in reallymine.

Decrypted the data successfully. PC3k wasn't needed. Guide at https://github.com/themaddoctor/linux-mybook-tools was helpful.

Congratulations.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.