WD Elements 750Gb - fried.. new pcb, now wrong size

[simon750]

edit:pls note - I realise I have posted this to the wrong forum, would appreciate it being moved to "Hard Disk Drives: data recovery and repair" as I couldn't see any way to delete in firefox or IE..

Afternoon all.

I have a WD Elements SE 750Gb external hdd - one of the newer ones that has a micro-usb connector that is mounted on the pcb, not an adapter to a sata drive. I had it plugged in the other day when starting the PC - there was a clicking noise that sounded like a key stuck on the keyboard. I powered off the PC, removed everything and restarted - all good.. except the drive wouldn't read. It would power on but was not recognised within windows 7 as having been attached to the system.

The data is important so I went out and bought another drive the same as the first and swapped out the pcb (in doing so I noticed the original drive had a burn mark through one of the chips). the new pcb has allowed the drive to be recognized but now has two problems:

1. drive cannot be initialized in drive manager - error: drive is marked read-only
2. drive size shows up as 2048Gb

I'm hopeful that it's just down to a different firmware on the pcb. If this is the case, is there a way I can backup the current firmware, replace it to access the data, the re-flash it back to the original for use with the current new drive?

or am I barking up the wrong tree? any help, pointers is appreciated.

thanks

Simon

[dmarques]

Hi,

You're in the right way, but to read FW and ROM contents you need special equipment, and expensive one, that only makes sense for data recovery companies.

If your PCB has external ROM, it's easier to do. If not, it's not so easy, but still possible.

So I think your best chance is to go to DR company to request a full diagnosis and quote.

[simon750]

thanks dmarques.

I had a look at the replacement drive I'd bought and noticed that the manufacture date was two weeks earlier than the original one and the PCB appeared to be of a different make.

I'll try grabbing another with a later date than my original.

As it's an external drive in a caddy and I won't be able to crack it open in the store, does anyone know where I might be able to match/translate a serial number against a manufacture date?

regards

Simon

[dmarques]

That will not be an easy task to translate external model into internal one, at least from what I've known.

[fzabkar]

Can you upload a detailed photo of the damaged (?) board? One of us will identify the ROM chip, in which case your local TV/AV repair shop should be able to transfer it for you.

[simon750]

Thanks Fzabkar.

to anyone following this thread the images are posted at:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Other-Exter ... m-p/110098

current status is I will try and transfer two chips from the damaged board to a donor board.

if i'm successful (or not) i'll post again.

Simon