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 Post subject: 3 TB Western Digital drive, out of MyBook, inaccessible.
PostPosted: May 17th, 2021, 16:53 
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Joined: May 17th, 2021, 16:46
Posts: 2
Location: US East Coast
Hello everyone,

I have a 3TB Western Digital MyBook drive that suddenly stopped being recognized.

This has the WD USB bridge that's typically required in order to see the filesystem because of the block size translation. It has the ASM1051W chip, which, I understand, actually does NOT encrypt the drive.

However, setting that aside for a moment...

Even when the USB PCB is removed, and drive is just plugged in to SATA power and data, it only gets recognized in the BIOS briefly upon a cold boot of the system. By the time any operating system tries to address it, it's gone. If I warm boot, the BIOS doesn't see it. This happens with both motherboard SATA and PCI card SATA adapters. Similar behavior ALSO happens if I remove the SATA PCB from the drive and connect only the SATA PCB: 0 MB on power on, then absent soon after. This suggests to be that the PCB is more likely, but not certain, to be OK. This is disappointing, as a new PCB and ROM swap is relatively expensive and less invasive.

Whether the WD PCB is present or not, the drive spins up, and just gives repeated three "gentle" clicks.

I've even tried a donor USB PCB from another MyBook. There was no change in behavior.

When connected via USB, repair utilities like testdisk or ddrescue just error out, rapidly, on every sector. It's as if the disk itself isn't even attached. When connected via SATA, it doesn't stay present long enough to be addressed by any OS.

I obtained an identical unit, WD MyBook 3.0 TB, with the same ASMEDIA ASM1051W chip. I was able to take its SATA drive, connect directly to a PC, and access the data after changing testdisk's block size to 4096 bytes from 512. This suggests to me that the ASM1051W chip does not encrypt, but the USB bridge simply translates the block size. So I feel like if I could get the non-working SATA drive to be recognized by a system, I could access its data.

There's no obvious damage to either side of the USB bridge, or the PCB on the drive itself. The drive was not physically abused.

I am rapidly approaching the conclusion that the problem is inside the disk. I'm so used to being able to slowly use ddrescue or similar to methodically extract, and am frustrated that this disk appears "too dead."

What's next? Would there be any hope in a hard drive PCB replacement and ROM swap? Or is it clear that the drive is damaged physically? If the latter, are there any reputable data recovery services that don't cost several thousands of dollars?

Anyone's thoughts are welcome.


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SATA HD PCB inside.jpg
SATA HD PCB inside.jpg [ 1.03 MiB | Viewed 6105 times ]
SATA HD PCB outside.jpg
SATA HD PCB outside.jpg [ 925.85 KiB | Viewed 6105 times ]
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 Post subject: Re: 3 TB Western Digital drive, out of MyBook, inaccessible.
PostPosted: May 18th, 2021, 4:17 
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Joined: January 28th, 2009, 10:54
Posts: 3452
Location: Greece
Hello,

ejlion wrote:
and just gives repeated three "gentle" clicks.


This suggests that you are most probably guessing right: The heads are dead. There is a tiny little chance there is some issue with the firmware, but I doubt it. But in any case there is nothing more you can do anyway.
If data contained in this drive is important, my best advice would be to give up DIY attempts now and send your drive to a pro.

Where on the East Coast are you located?
I suggest you get in touch with Jon at Datasavers (https://www.datasaversllc.com).
I believe they have a flat rate which is far away from "several thousands". They're located in Atlanta.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners


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 Post subject: Re: 3 TB Western Digital drive, out of MyBook, inaccessible.
PostPosted: May 18th, 2021, 21:10 
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Joined: May 17th, 2021, 16:46
Posts: 2
Location: US East Coast
Thank you! I will reach out to him.


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