am new here so i'll introduce myself lol, computer hobbyist thats been handed one of these drives......

k i see lots of topics on these drives and have ran through a few but now i'm stuck as to what to do next... drive was not reporting at all when i first got hold of it, so have purchased a replacement PCB, have swapped over U12 to the donor board, drive with donor board shows up in windows without a partition map or initialization and am stuck as to what to do next

used minitool partition wizard to no avail
SMART is reporting OK with a warning on reallocated sectors but quick and extended tests come back as passes
as i understand this is a SED drive that encrypts all data on the fly so all data to the drive is encrypted wether password required or not ? so does this mean there is an algorythm key somewhere on the old PCB that i need to transfer across ?

i see there is another flash chip U14 ? what data might be on that ? would the key be there ? how would i go about getting said key and xfering it across to the new baord ?

newb in a minefield and many thanks for any replies ))

WDC WD5000BMVW-11AJGS0

did a straight swap usb board for usb board only xfered across U12 chip, this is why i dont understand the missing partition table and files, if it were encrypted i would have thought the drive would have been able to decode the information as its not password activated yet.... lol told him never to buy another drive like this ever again lol

LBA: 0 BLOCK: 0

0000000000: 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 BAD BAD BAD BAD
0000000010: 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 BAD BAD BAD BAD
0000000020: 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 BAD BAD BAD BAD
0000000030: 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 BAD BAD BAD BAD
0000000040: 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 BAD BAD BAD BAD
0000000050: 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 BAD BAD BAD BAD
0000000060: 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 BAD BAD BAD BAD
0000000070: 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 BAD BAD BAD BAD
0000000080: 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 42 41 44 20 BAD BAD BAD BAD

add nauseum lol as its reporting bad ? is that a way for the drive to report to OS that its unable to decrypt the drive, instead of reporting the actual data thats there therefor keeping data secure ? <--- laymans terms i know but then again i'm a layman

only transfered across U12 sofar as on reading thats the most important chip and was unable to determine what U14 is for ? its a winbond chip same as U12 so its flashable but what would it keep ? couldnt be partition info as thats kept on the platters itself is it not ?


as i understand it is an identical board :S
board model number is 2060-771961-001 so went for exact same one presumed rev A as no rev B designation on pcb
single partition and no password on drive

why must these shitty drives encrypt literally everything lol i'm presuming the partition table and everything else is encrypted aswell and why cant they just use a standard sata - usb bridge board like almost every other bloody portable drive out there ?

I'm pretty sure from that sector the encryption may not be the issue (though it's most likely encrypted by the USB PCB you replaced). Seems that it's not actually reading the sector at all thus reporting "BAD BAD BAD" to your hex editor.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

will have a look at replacing U14 aswell, will double check solder lands on U12 make sure i soldered them all correctly just to be on safe side

thats the problem, this drive is not mine, am doing this as a favor for a cash strapped lad and his girlfriend they travel the world backpacking and all their bloody photo's are on the thing, i couldnt even poll the original board as it when i installed with original it installed the drivers then i couldnt get anything from device manager to say the drive was even connected...

should i try the HDDSupertool before or after i take the U14 off the original board

thanks for all your help guys bloody great bunch

replacing U12 was no problem was off in literally seconds so 14 shouldnt be any harder, just slightly tighter, have a decent hotair rework gun as i used to repair mobile phones etc etc.. will double check the encryption chips tomorrow when i get a chance, same goes for HDDst after i grab a linux image

edit: one thing i did notice earlier after rebooting my machine with the WD attached to USB... PC took ages to post and then to bring up the win 7 login screen took an age aswell, so maybe it is just suffering from the slow bug ? if this might be the case you think swapping U12 back to the original board and going with the original and see if its somehow magically fixed itself as they sometimes have a habbit of doing ?