Hi Everyone, new to this forum and found you after a google search which resulted in the following thread. viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17398. Anyway My external harddrive - WD My Book Essential 2TB failed a couple of weeks back and after reading the thread above I figured I would by an identical PCB from Ebay which I have bought but i am still unable to recover anything from the drive.

The symptoms that I have picked up are:

with original PCB:

computer recognises drive in computer management, but it is unallocated and unintialised;
trying to initialise the device gets an I/O error (can't remember the exact details of the error and don't currently have the device with me as away from home);
drive does not spin up; and
light remains constant.


With new PCB:

Hard drive spins up;
light flashes; and
computer does not recognise the drive.

I have not done anything more as I don't want to wreck the drive. Having said that I am pretty certain that all the important data on the drive was backed up, though I am doing this to be certain that I have everything.

Any help would be appreciated and I have attached photos of the original PCB.

Thanks in advance.

Jason

Try connecting the drive by SATA and check it's ok with something like MHDD.

You will not be able to read any data like this due to the encryption, so do not attempt to format it or anything like that.

An MHDD media scan should check if the drive is healthy, as even a few bad sectors is often enough for prevent it initialising through the USB encrypting bridge board.

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IMO the most likely problem on the USB-SATA PCB is the 8-pin dual MOSFET at location U4. If so, then there are at least two DIY methods for recovering your data.

One involves replacing the chip with two wire links. The other involves powering up the drive via a separate power supply and utilising the bridge board for the SATA data connection.

Can you tell us the markings on U4?

Can you also measure the voltages on each pin of U4? You will need to be very careful when doing this. If you slip with your probes, you will do serious damage. You don't need to connect the drive when taking these measurements.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

If the computer management sees the drive as unallocated, the drive must be spinning. And, I believe that the problem might not be on the PCB.

Thanks for the responses will follow these steps tonight when I get home and report then.

Hi guys

have tried the suggestions i can, hte results are as follows:

@pcimage: the drive is not recognized at all and could not run anything on it;

@fzabkar: the markings on the U4 are 4619 BA1R16, I don't have equipment to test the voltages though i can get some if absolutely needed.

U4 could be an AO4619 dual MOSFET switch.

http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20She ... AO4619.pdf

It switches the +5V and +12V power to the drive.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Do you recommend that I try to do the first method you mentioned? and if so is there a post on this forum explaining how?

I don't recommend doing any hacking until you've actually measured something.

And yes there is a post, on another forum.

Waiting for your feedback ...

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

In which case (assuming you have done as requested and connected straight to SATA) there is a problem with the drive itself and not the USB bridge board.

Is the drive spinning OK when connected directly to SATA?

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!