A friend of mine has/had a WD passport wdbaaa3200ard. She wrote me the other night and said that "while doing a firmware update, she read that she should backup her data and that she got scared and canceled it". By cancel she means unplugged the drive mid update. The firmware on this drive is corrupted and I was optimistic that upon taking off the casing I would find an USB -> SATA module , pop that off, and pull the data. Unfortunately the USB plug is soldered to the HDD PCB and closed any door of an easy repair. I have access to a few different recovery tools (HD Doctor for WD, OnTrack, etc) but I need to get a valid firmware on this drive first. When plugged into a windows 7 machine the drive installs as an "Initio Combo Device Class". I would like to believe that something exist that will allow me to write a new firmware over the corrupted one. The WD firmware tool doesn't recognize the drive in it's current fubar state. I am not getting too invested into this. I have found diagrams for soldering a SATA connection etc etc but with the encryption I don't feel that is wise route. I've also looked at new PCB and swapping the few magic chips to make it all work again, but a new PCB is $60-$70 and without guarantee. From the lurking I've done, "seek a pro" is the typical response and I will agree this likely needs a pro but I am giving as much effort as I can to feel good about it when I break this girls heart that she lost a ton of data (WHY DO PEOPLE ONLY BACK UP TO A SINGLE DRIVE!). So does anyone have access to software (Linux or Windows) that will allow me to write a new firmware? Other than the botched firmware this drive is 100%.

Sorry to say, but like you allready guessed only a pro can help here.
Interrupting a firmware update is never a good idea

Dobre

_________________
Murphy was an optimist

Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu

Ditto...