Hello guys ! i m looking for some help to recover a WD Elements 1.5TB USB HD. model WDBAAU0016HBK-01. i already took the drive out got the model WD15EARS-00MVWB0. i tired to plug in with a USB and start up with windows. 9 out of 10 time windows will not find the driver. and i desided to connect it directly to the PC. at 1st bios will not detect the drive. after reading some post i find out that if put the drive at a diff position(like up side down or standing the drive side way) it will get detected by bios. but it will not read any info from the drive like track or size, it's just said 0. also i don't know if this is normal. while the drive is booting up. i try to hold it in my hand (just want to see the drive will spin) i can feel it dose spin but then it feel like it's spin off to one side or it's spinning unevenly. i m very new to data recovery plz go easy one me =D thx alot for any kind of help !!

The WD Elements case has a bridge board inside that does the conversion from SATA to USB. On that board is a chip that encrypts/decrypts the data. If you remove the drive and plug it straight into the PC via SATA, even if there is no problem with the drive you will not see any data as it's encrypted by that chip.

From what you said I think I understand it that you can get the BIOS to detect the drive, but at 0MB?

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Thx for your fast reply Nick !

Yes BIOS can detect the drive sometime if i stand it up or turn it upside down(bois see the drive as 0MB 0 track. if i just put the drive flat, most of the time BIOS will not detect the drive. i did try to use USB and mount it with windows. but 1 out of 10 time windows will detect the drive. and it will not read the drive. all i get is a drive icon in my computer. and the loading bar will never stop. any test u can recommand me to try ?

If it's detecting as 0MB you might have firmware issues with the drive. The fact that it doesn't always pickup and shows as 0MB, maybe weak heads or bad sectors in SA. I think it could be a number of things, but nothing would be be able to be solved DIY in my opinion

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as u told me it had encrypts/decrypts on the USB board so i put the drive back to the USB box. i pluged into my win7 and it show it's mounted to it. i checked detail from the USB properties. it's show

Ext HHD 1021
Manufacturer : unavailable
Model : Ext HDD 1021
Model Number : unavailable
Categories : Storahe device
Decription : unavailable

i waited for a long time to see if windows protect the drive, after 15 min i got a pop up windows said L:\ is not accessible

The Parameter is incorrect.

i know nothing about recovery data / drive. but i always have harddrive hanging outside my computer case. when i power up it i feel like this drive spin up for a few. i hear some normal clicking sound and it stop

i do see L: drive in Disk management. and it's show File system RAW | Healthy (primary Partition) | Capacity 1397.26 GB | Free 1397.26 | Free % 100% | Fault Tolerance no | Overhead 0%

anything i can still test it out b4 i really go with DIY ?

If it is spinning down, then it most likely is getting the info from the board. "Normal clicking". This statement is odd because in the OP you said you held it in your hand and it seemed unbalanced, which was probably just the normal feel of a drive, but in the last post clicking then it's spinning down. When you hold a drive, it does want to twist on you. I don't think I would ever describe clicking as normal. Most of the time there is a slight flutter when power is applied to the drive.

It sounds like you are powering the drive on and off quite a bit. I'd probably stop that. I am a little confused after the last post with the symptoms of the drive.

Depending on what the drive is actually doing: If the drive isn't spinning down, then you can try cloning the drive. It may be that you are getting hung up on some bad sectors or that the drive has degrading heads, which can cause problems, but cloning may be able to get through it. However, if the drive is spinning down, I don't think there is much you can do as DIY.

This drive may have head and/or media problems so there is no DIY options.
Forcing the drive to spin again and again, can cause more deep problem!
I suggest to seek for professional help.
This drive is not an easy one even for recovery companies if have head problems, so don't make things more worse if your data is really important....

Janos

Agree with Janos.

Clicking/spindown WD 1.5Tb are not DIY'able, trust us.

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