Hi gurus, this is my first post here, so hi to all.
Just to clarify my position, I'm not a professionist in this field, i'm just a soft developer who loves "hacking".

My hdd WD WDBAAA5000AWT seems to be broken due to crash on my floor, but i would like recover the data.
Syntoms: nothing happens if i connect usb cable to my computer. No leds on, no rumors.. Nothing.
I began to search some useful informations and surfing the web i found some explainations about bypassing the usb interface connecting directly the SATA->USB controller to a raw Sata connector.
So i soldered some cables from the places over the PCB to a new sata connector following the pcb schema found in a russian site.
Now the hdd seems to have some life, but i'm facing a new problem that i don't know how to solve.
The hdd moves the cilynders, i can hear that it is running and Win7 recognizes a peripheral like an hdd, but it doesn't recognize the model. System informations are empty: no vendor, no id and so on.
The next step was connecting the hdd directly in the pc, but my BIOS doesn't see it.
I used On track utility trying to fix the problem and the first time after the reboot bios recognizes the WD model, after that it never recognized it.
Booting hdd regenerator 2011 utility doesn't find the hdd.

Now my questions are:
1) it could be a problem about the physical connection of the pcb?
2) is it required to plug all 3 GND pins of the sata data connector?
3) wich could be the next step to try?

Thanks to all!

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http://myitside.blogspot.com

There are more problems with the drive than just the USB connector

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

Maybe your are right, but a bad connection could generate wrong data sent to the bios, i.e.. My real problem is not recover my data rather my will to learn...


Any suggestion is really appreciated.

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http://myitside.blogspot.com

Anyone has some ideas?
Should i buy a new pcb, or i can do some other test?

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http://myitside.blogspot.com

Here's one idea: You didn't say that you had removed the necessary capacitors from the PCB.
Also, since you dropped the drive, internal damage is also possible - so perhaps it may all be a waste of time.

Thanks Vulcan for your interest. I didn't say that i have removed the capacitors because i considered it as implicit.
I followed the schema reported in russian site link and it includes the instructions to remove the capacitors. Sorry for my oversight.
One more information is that the led is fixed, that it means "inactive state" as described in the user manual.

An internal damage is possible, you're right, but i'd like to try all the ways that i have before to put it in the basket.

Thanks again for the interest in my cause!

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http://myitside.blogspot.com

Sometimes using Win7, in hw info i can see the model of the hard disk, but no data in "Volumes" section. If i click on "Insert data" sometimes i see the correct size of the drive, sometimes i see that it is unitialized and it has 0 bytes.
One time, when it was partially recognized, i used HxD software to "open" the drive raw data.
I can see the sector 1 set to 0 (as it should be) and i can see a lot of "bytes" beginning from sector 2048...

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http://myitside.blogspot.com