Hello,

I've done a lot of searching around the internet for help on this and am not totally sure the best place to ask this question, but found this forum and seems like a good place.

This model external drive uses a Western Digital Caviar SE 16 WD5000AAKS 500GB hard drive, and like many others I have found on the internet, the blue light on the enclosure would no longer turn on, causing the drive to no longer be recognizable to any computer. It appears this may be due to a power supply problem or other issue on the small circuit board that runs the external drive.

Many have had luck removing the drive from the enclosure and connecting it directly to a PC (it's a SATA) to be able and retrieve data.

So I did this, and I can see the actual drive in windows under computer management, but it shows it's not initialized. I understand these drives are formatted for Linux, and tried using a driver I found recommended in one of the support threads I found. (this is what is was: http://www.fs-driver.org/download.html)

I've also tried using Easeus Drive Recovery Program, and it sees the drive, but searches for files and partitions forever (like 24 hours continuous) with no luck.

Does this mean that maybe in my case the actual drive is fried? Or is there something else I could try (or am not doing properly) and maybe the data is still there somewhere? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you,

without the proper tools you cannot solve this case
i.e. SD or pc3k

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

You might need a working interface board. Many WD drives are encrypted, and the encryption is handled by the Initio IC on the interface PCB. So look at the little PCB and for the presence of this IC.

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

What is the drive recognised as in the BIOS/Windows, put this down exactly as it appears and we may be able to provide a diagnosis. If it is identified by the same model number that can be found on the label it is likely that degraded media or a PCB problem is the underlying cause.



Not applicable for this drive.

Thank you for the replies. I bit the bullet and brought the drive to a recovery place that I found on the internet that happened to be a block away from my office. In summary, I was told the disk had physical damage in the 2nd sector. Multiple heads needed to be replaced. And there was some collision from head to platter resulting in some logical reconstruction needing to take place. The surface damage isn't too severe, in their opinion, to recover all of the data. All costs, including parts, labor, and logical programming, is about $1700. Does this all sound right and the cost reasonable? Thanks again

Can you provide a name and website for this company and we'll tell you if this is a good company or not.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

diskdataretrieval.com

disk data retrieval. The website is all one word.

Never heard of them, did anyone else?

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www.datarecoveryne.com

This diagnosis sounds somewhat bogus and jargon-y. For this price you could probably send it to Ontrack or somewhere else reputable, as opposed to the random shop around the corner. In fact they may just be outsourcing somewhere else.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Just FYI, places like this in the US are a dime a dozen. The 4 or 5 I've used personally all use the same techno jargon and over-quote the prices. I've heard horror stories like this countless times. It's extremely hard to find a reputable place unless you ask on the forums here first. $1700 is way too much IMO. If "multiple" heads needed to be replaced I doubt the SA could have ever been read and it sounds like that part is functioning at least.

1700usd? well if they opened the drive then... who knows what they are doing.

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It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
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If you can see it in Windows you can recover data by yourself. Scan it with RStudio or DMDE. If they show content of your drive you can decide whether you want to buy this software (cost less than 100$). You also have to buy a new drive (50$ ?) where you can recover your data.

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Not always. And it's a bad idea to try to recover data from a drive without cloning it first.

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It is not a good idea to give such advice with minimal info on the problem. I have seen hundreds of cases where windows can see a disk but attempting to recover with windows software would almost certainly have complicated the case.

You're right. He should clone (using free ver of DMDE) the disk first (another 50$ for disk) and then scan the copy with RStudio or DMDE (windows or dos version)

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data recovery Poland

Hi Guys,

Just following your convo, i think I may have found a solution to "faloppi's" Post. I believe if you check this forum and look at Solution 5. Hope this helps, if its works pls let us know as I have the exact same issue.

Website: http://www.fixya.com/support/t721971-wd ... 00gb_model

Hope this helps.