Hi

I'm new here and after searching the net this looks like the place to ask. I have a Western Digital portable hard drive that possibly has failed. Yesterday I plugged it in and could tell the drive was spinning which was followed by a few short clicks. Stop spinning. Restart spinning, few clicks again. Then drive powers down. Led stayed lit. Drive not recognzed at all by my computer.

Today, gave a small shot of De-Oxit in micro usb port and by some miracle, it powered up and led flashed steadily and the computer recognized it. Hurried and bought another portable drive to backup copy everything and started transferring. About 2 minutes into transfer, the transfer froze and had to be cancelled. Now computer will sometimes show "drive: G" but will not say "My Passport" which is then followed by a freezing of "My Computer" folder and have to control+alt+delete to try again. I have to really move the sub cable a lot to randomly get Drive: G to even appear.

My question is this: Do I need a new PC board or one of the other USB bypass solutions I've seen for these. I have read those can unreliable. The problem seems intermittent and not a total drive failure yet. I had thought of buying a used one of the same model from Ebay and board swapping but didn't know if the board needed to be more specific rather than model
I had a quote for data retrieval at $600 to $1200. That's not happening as most of my data is backed-up elsewhere. Would the data on the drive be encrypted if I could view it through My Computer before? I used to manually drag and drop files into it.

I have read of the many failures of these types of drives and thought I would ask what the best next step should be.

Thanks
Joel

It's very unlikely you'll find a compatible PCB for your drive, so I wouldn't bother going down that route.

Might be worth a shot to get someone with decent soldering skills to check the connections from the micro USB connector to the PCB, often these get slightly lifted up or a dry joint.

$600-$1200 sounds suspiciously high for a PCB problem, assuming that what it is. The fact that you say that jiggling the connector makes it intermittently work suggests that what it is.

Good luck!

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Here's one with matching pcb numbers on both the board and the pcb sticker. Would that work for a swap?

Thanks
Joel

@Joel, Essentials models usually (always?) incorporate hardware encryption. Therefore a direct SATA connection will not give you access to your data.

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Like I said, very unlikely you'll get a replacement PCB to work.

To elaborate, each PCB has specific ROM version and other adaptive data programmed into it, unique to the drive.

And like fzabkar says they incorporate hardware encryption, so your only real DIY chance is to try and repair the micro USB connection, otherwise you need pro intervention, but IMHO that should be a whole lot cheaper than you have indicated.

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The essentials aren't encrypted.

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My Passport® Essential™ and Essential SE Ultra-Portable Hard Drives User Manual:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/U ... 705020.pdf

In the list of features ...

"Drive lock—Gain peace of mind knowing that your data is protected from unauthorized access or theft with password protection and 256-bit hardwarebased encryption."

"WD SmartWare software is an easy-to-use tool that gives you the power to:
• Secure your drive—In drive settings, create a password to protect your encrypted drive from unauthorized access or data theft."

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I had no password set for the drive. Would it still be encrypted. I mostly Drag and Dropped files to be backed up rather than letting the software do it for me. The software was able to create numerous copies of each back-up file if I chose so. In any case I have soldering skills, though I have never soldered on a smd board before. I don't see any cracks near the usb port. Could I take the board loose and clean the contacts that connect to the drive itself also? I have seen other explanations on accessing the drive through a SATA mod, but I'm confused on the encryption part. So would the drive constantly de-encrypt files when I accessed them through the usb via "My Computer?"

Yesterday, I was wiggling the usb again and through the device manager i could see the drive. The drive claimed it had no partition and was blank despite the fact that I never erased or formatted the drive.

Any other thoughts?

Thanks
Joel

Your data will be encrypted irrespective of whether you have set a password. That said, since jono's opinion is at odds with WD's user manual, perhaps you could confer privately with him.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks for the replies,

Not to say anyone is right or wrong but I was wondering the same about passwords. I did not set a password so I wondered what the point of encrypting the data would be. There would be no logical gain by encrypting the data just for storage. I mean if i had set a password and some had stolen the drive, the data would be accessible anyway. If I had then it wouldn't be accessible without a password and back door methods to gain access to the drive would yield encrypted data.

I found this on page 22 here: http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/U ... 705057.pdf "You should password protect your drive if you are worried that someone else will gain access to your drive and you do not want them to see your files on the drive."

Would encrypted data be able to de-encrypted and viewed again? Another data recovery site, CCR DataTech Inc., gave a quote of $695. Again, more than I want to pay. But it does make me wonder about the encryption. If not password protected, is it possible a board swap would work?

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/U ... 705020.pdf
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/U ... 705057.pdf

Thanks
Joel

Try another USB cable.
Inspect the USB port connector on the PCB (use magnifying glass) and re-solder the connection points,(you will need fine tip soldering iron and soldering skills), reinspect the area so that there are no shorts introduced (use magnifying glass), clean the flux, connect and check.

if your drive is getting detected,without wiggling, clone/image it and run recovery software
(r-studio) to get your data back

The following thread has several sector dumps from a 3TB My Book Essentials, both inside and outside the enclosure:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/29364 ... hown-there

It illustrates the effect of AES hardware encryption. The OP's drive was not password protected.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I ordered a new micro usb cable to try first. I had tried a few data recovery software. One found the bundled files that are preloaded on the drive but could not access the rest. I also read somewhere that if it was mid file tranfer and it got disconnected by pulling the usb without stopping the device first, then that could have corrupted the partition. Any truth to this?

Thanks
Joel

I've personally seen a corrupted FAT32 directory after disconnecting a drive when the transfer has hung, so yes I think it's possible. You may see a "Delayed Write Failure". You can minimise the risk in Windows by optimising the drive for "Quick Removal". I believe this disables write caching.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

One thing is PASSWORD, another is ENCRYPTION (but you can have BOTH).

You're right. My bad. I was thinking of the WD Elements. Those aren't encrypted. Sorry for the confusion.

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The USB port terminals are very tiny and require a small soldering iron, good eyesight, and a steady hand to fix bad joints. I can't do it without the aid of magnification. Others report a lot of USB connection issues, but for us it is pretty unusual.

If it is some other sort of PCB issue, then a PCB / ROM swap should work.

Clicking and spinning down is more frequently caused by bad heads. Not DIY.

In terms of repair frequency, on these models we see bad heads followed by firmware corruption.

Jono

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