Hi

A customer brought in this portable USB HDD for data recovery. He said it didn't make any clicking noises. and the system prompted him to format the drive to use it. So I figured I could perform a software data recovery with it.

When I plugged it in, it took a while to detect the drive. But I could see the whole directory structure. and proceeded to drag a folder with photos. It copied 59 files completely before Windows froze up.

It appears I was extremely lucky.

I haven't been able to get the same result all afternoon. The USB connector appeared loose So I opened up the casing to have a peak at the PCB. The connector appears firmly attached to the PCB.

But then I noticed solder marks near the jumper connectors. So someone has had a go before me? What are these solder pads used for? I've seen people connect it to SATA, but the wires were all over the place, not neatly in a row.

Any thoughts on how to proceed next? I'll plug it in one more time tomorrow morning. And then probably give it back to the customer. We dislike working on equipment that has been tampered with.

PCB is fine I'd say.

Almost certainly bad sectors and/or firmware issues.

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PC Image Data Recovery
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New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

It sounds like the drive needs the "slow fix". HDDSuperTool should be able to do this, if the drive can be detected again.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Use Pcb 2060-771692-001, move ROM to it and try to clone drive.
After it's done you will need to decrypt the data.

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se