Hi guys, I had been storing all my toddler's baby videos & photos to a WD MyBook Essential with 2TB of storage. As far as I was concerned my backside was covered, as what could go wrong....right? :/

Anyway, one day the Essential just died, as in it would not power on. At first I thought it was the power adapter so I tried another one with a similar rating, didn't work. Since I am not in the US and had purchased the Essential on a trip, I ordered a replacement power adapter online. It came after a few weeks (long process) and the Essential still would not power on! I then decided to take the unit apart and attempt a recovery from the HDD (WD20EACS) directly, my last attempts to save what are the ONLY copies of my baby's early videos.

I bought a HDD USB 3.0 SATA dock from Plugable. The HDD is detected fine but there are no files on it! My Win7 can detect the physical drive as 2TB but there is no file system detected.

My questions:

1. What has gone wrong?
2. Should I make an image of the HDD and work on that instead of the physical drive?
3. Can the files be recovered? Most of them were m2ts files of HD video.
4. What is the best way to recover the data? I am willing to spend $ if it comes to that.

I would really appreciate any helpful input, I am in a real pickle! If my wife finds out.......

Hi darrko,

WD MyBook Essential use hardware encryption which is build in to the caddy USB bridge board. Putting it basically your data gets encrypted on the fly as it written to the hard drive.

As you have found out if you connect the drive via SATA and not use the USB bridge no partitions, MBR or data is seen as the data is a jumbled up ie encrypted. This is normal.

You say you have connected the SATA drive & it was detected fine. What ever you do don't format the drive.
It looks like from what you have posted that the USB bridge board is faulty.
If you can post high quality pics of both sides of the USB bridge board so we can look. You might be lucky & maybe get it working if not then you would need to get a compatible USB bridge board.


Loki

Ok! Thanks for the quick reply. Here are the photos:

Yeah, what he said above. Do not mess with the drive, do not format or anything windows tells you to do, its all with the USB case.

Post the images and wait. I think you are lucky.

Shane

Thank you for the reply. Actually I did post the photos a while back but it's pending approval from the Moderator.

So we can't edit posts huh? Posted the same photo twice. Here is the other side of the board:

This link might be worth reading as its could possibly help get the faulty USB bridge board powering up the drive by bridging the MOSFET pair.

Just be aware that DIY always comes with risks

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22008&p=147573&hilit=essentials+thanks+mosfet#p147573


The following looks like a compatible board:

http://www.harddrivesforsale.com/4061-7 ... board.html

4060-705089-001 REV P1 on the PCB
4061-705089-001 Rev AG on the barcode sticker


Loki

Another link regarding the MOSFET at U6

Credit to fzabkar previous post:
"Does the drive spin up when connected to the board? If not, then a common cause is the dual MOSFET switch at location U6. This IC switches +5V and +12V power to the drive.

If U6 is faulty, then it can be removed and replaced with two wire links. You would need to connect the Drain1 and Source1 pins together, and the Drain2 and Source2 pins together. This effectively bypasses both switches and permanently powers on the drive."


viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24590&hilit=+u6



Loki

Hi and thanks again for the very helpful information.

I do understand the risks of DIY and I don't think I am ready to take any with the data I am trying to recover. It is just too important for me at this time. Besides, I have never attempted a DIY task involving PCBs before so I do not think it would be very wise for this to be my first!

The link you very helpfully provided for the replacement board, should I just get it? Will that be the solution to the issue? The photo of that board shows a bit of burnout on the top right corner. Would that be a problem?

If you're not comfortable doing the DIY solution yourself then hopefully getting that compatible replacement board would be your best option to solve your problem.

_________________
Encryption is a powerful defensive weapon for free people.
It offers a technical guarantee of privacy, regardless
of who is running the government - E. Dyson

Hi darrko,

Firstly we'll done, it's a wise person who knows their limitations.


The website is a good known site to gets parts. Also it does say the "Condition of this board is USED. It has been tested and appears to be in 100% working condition"

All you would need to do is connect the drive to the USB bridge board, attach the correct power supply & connect the USB3 cable etc.

Once you have access to your data I would then suggest looking into using a backup strategy as it's cheaper & less hassle than worrying about data recovery after the fault/issue has happened.

Loki

Thank you again Loki & Frozwire, I have placed the order for the replacement board and will confirm when I get my data back.

As for the backup strategy, what do you recommend? A RAID 1 array? Apart from that, everything is dependent on the hard drive which inevitably fail. How many mirrors can one make? All we have are hard disks!

One more question: is there any chance of the data getting lost if there is something wrong with the replacement board? If the board is incompatible? Or perhaps the encryption keys don't match?

Raid1 is good for hardware failures but if say for example you get a power surge it could take out both drives in your pc or you get a virus that wipes your files, your mirror will do the same.

You could just use another external drive as backup & keep it separate ie disconnect it after you have backed up & place it somewhere safe or with cloud storage being cheap why not use that?

Onedrive for business get you 1Tb of cloud storage https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/ for $2.50 user/month with annual commitment



Loki

I use the premium Dropbox service very actively for work files etc but when it comes to HD videos, as in this case, the m2ts files get pretty darn big! The upload process (I am in a Third World country with adequate Internet speeds) would alone be a daunting task. I totally agree with you that cloud storage does seem like the most viable option at the moment for most kind of data but is it a feasible option for large-sized video files backup?

For most people, with one or two PC's, in a home environment, with a lot of important media files and personal information.. I currently recommend a local USB disk and perhaps a cloud service to cover the off-site aspect of backing up your stuff.

When you have 2 copies of the important stuff, 1 copy backs up the other. And both backup your main working source.

_________________
On a clear disk you can seek forever.

Update:

I ordered the replacement bridge and received it a few days back. Set it up with my HDD and I now have access to all the data! Took immediate backup. I just wanted to thank you all for your excellent advice.

Fantastic!

From now on are you going to keep backups and update them from time to time?

_________________
On a clear disk you can seek forever.

Yes sir! Lesson learned.