I have a WD 2.5" HDD that for no reason suddenly stopped being seen by Windows or Ubunto. Drive did not fall and does not make any strange sounds or clicks. Turns on fine, the spin sound sounds normal (no stuck head). When connecting to USB, PC will make the default sound you hear when you connect a device but it is not seen in any manager or data restore software, not as RAW, not as "undefined," nothing. So there is nothing to "scan."

Since it doesn't seem to be anything mechanical, I am going to try a PCB swap.
I'm going to try to use the USB connection before I might try to bypass the USB with a SATA connection.
As you can see in the attached screenshot, my PCB has two chips next to each other; one is the BIOS and one is a FLASH controller.
I found an identical model on Aliexpress and ordered it. Problem is, the one that came has two BIOS chips instead of one BIOS and one FLASH.

My question is, do you think it's enough to just swap the BIOS chip without touching the FLASH chip? Or do I have to order a different PCB that has both the BIOS and the FLASH chip so I can swap both?

Thanks!

Your PCB is fine.

Most probably your drive is suffering from "Slow Responding" problem, NOT related to your PCB.

You have two options:

a) If your data is valuable -- consult a data recovery professional. At this point, it shouldn't be an expensive task.
b) If your data is not valuable and you're willing to risk, then I believe HDDSuperClone can solve the Slow responding problem? Not sure.
In any case you need to convert your drive to SATA, then deal with the encryption issue. To convert to SATA you need to transfer only U12 chip to the new board (to answer your question). U14 handles the USB bridge. If your patient drive has a U12 like the one shown on the top of the picture (the one you said you wanted to buy), then this chip is more fragile and you need to be very careful when you solder and unsolder it. If you damage it -- game over (well, almost).

AND, we've seen that usually slow responding is being caused by a duff head, so you'd might be in for some further trouble.

Good luck

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

Hello,

1: your problem is likely not related to pcb.
2: that pcb is just fine, although it has different serial flash on it. (only the package is different).
the SFL on the left (U14) is for the bridge IC, and the one on the right (U12) is for the drive MCU (so called ROM chip you need to move to the donor pcb in case of a pcb replacement).

IMO your drive probably has bad sectors or weak head plus a background process running which prevents it from being detected by the USB bridge and consequently the PC.

pepe

edit: Dmitris was faster composing his post apparently

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Thanks, guys, you were both a big help.

After reading what northwind and pepe wrote, would it be correct to say that if it's not a PCB issue, that I can just convert the USB to SATA without swapping anything from another PCB? Also, is it possible that just by converting to SATA that it would be able to read it? Or will it still be necessary to access the service area and do modifications to the firmware (like a patch) to let the drive work again? I'm asking because as far as I know, one would need software to do this such as PC-3000, which I don't own. (I also don't know if the drive is encrypted. It's a passport, which I read is usually encrypted, unlike elements, which is usually not encrypted.)

No, it is not a PCB issue. Swapping to SATA only compounds the issues if you aren't equipped to deal with weak heads, firmware, bad sectors, encryption and possible file system damage.

The problem is, right now, we can't be sure to what extent the damage is.

Unless there is a dead head, it should be a sub $500 recovery by reputable non-gouging labs. (I got a newer 4TB WD passport yesterday that a lab quoted a bunch of BS with a price tag of $2700CAD. It was only a $450CAD job with us.

Going the DIY route might save you a few bucks,..but it could end up costing you more. That is a decision only you can make.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Thanks.

I was told that the controller in the passport that controls the power to the USB can fail, causing the USB port to get a low power supply. USB should be getting at least 1.3 amps. Can someone refer to me some adaptor or something that I can connect the passport to that would give it more power?

???
I can't interpret this one...

Generally, your PC provides power to the drive through USB port. This may not be sufficient if you use a connector on the front panel, coz those are wired to the MoBo and together with your USB cable the voltage drop can be high enough to make it fail at the moment of starting spinup. But this usually does not occur if you use a port on the backplane which is directly soldered to the MoBo and using a short USB cable.
I definitely think this is not your problem coz you said it spins up without problem.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

My mistake. What he said is that there are two small capacitors inside the drive that provides electricity to the motor. These fail and don't provide enough power to the motor to make it readable.

as it's been said, it's likely not a pcb issue because it spins fine. If you wanna replace the pcb, go on and do it but it's not likely it would help.
It's gonna be a bit more complicated to recover if you manage to kill the rom chip during the transfer.

_________________
Adatmentés - Data recovery

@zvit
I'm not in DR business, so I could tell it directly:
The job is very simple, but is not DIY. Every pro can do it. The question is for how much....
You may start the bid...

@pepe Just to try, I connected the drive to a USB3 port on the back of the PC with a short cable. What happens is strange. It turns on and spins like before but this time, after a few seconds it stops spinning and the power led light goes into a slow blinking mode (on-off-on-off, every few seconds.) When I connect to the front of the PC (USB2 port) or a USB3 hub that's connected to the PC, it continually spins and the power led light stays on constantly.

@northwind I don't think HDDSuperClone can solve the Slow responding problem because I don't have a "slow" responding issue but a "no" responding issue. The drive is not detected in a way that anything can scan it.

@BGman I'm also not in the DR business but I am a software engineer programmer, so I've been able to do many DR and video/audio repair jobs on the side that don't need clean rooms or PCB swaps. Even a simple stuck head is ok for me When you say "The job is very simple, but is not DIY. Every pro can do it" I'd like to ask what you mean by "is not DIY." Is it because of decrypting? If I can get the drive to be detected, I can figure out the decrypting part in Linux or something. I'm doing this more for the experience. If all it needs to get detected is soldering a few wires to convert it to SATA, I have a professional soldering guy that would do that for $30. But if converting to SATA absolutely REQUIRES a PCB swap and controller swap (which risks damaging the ROM chip and losing data, then maybe I'd skip this job.

So my question is, is there a way to just get the drive detected in Windows or Linux without swapping the PCB or chips. Would bypassing the USB port to SATA be enough to get it detected and scannable?

@BGman, in other words, would you mind explaining what the "simple job" workflow would be for a pro that would do it? I love learning new things.

It looks like you've already made up your mind about your drive's problem, so no point for all of us to try and change it.
You 've been told that your PCB is fine, yet you still insist on wanting to play with it.
You've been told that the problem of your drive is the "slow responding" problem, yet you decided it is not.



I've already explained the steps, but here they are again:

1. Convert the drive to SATA, with SA blocked
2. Patch the fw to get past the relo problem (ideally in RAM)
3. Tackle encryption
4. Image the drive.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

I don't know where you got this from. I already agreed with everyone who told me that it's probably not a PCB issue and was asking about the next steps which were converting to SATA.


I probably didn't understand what "slow responding" meant. You said that HDDSuperClone may be able to solve a Slow responding problem however, I didn't understand how HDDSuperClone would be able to scan a drive that's not detected; it would have nothing to scan.

Anyway, thank you for repeating the steps.

Short answer is NO.

@northwind answered your questions very clearly.
I could add more details, but it wouldn't be fair to the others members of this forum.

I only want to be fair. I read the posting guidelines and only saw that it says to be nice. What wouldn't be fair to go into details about?

I would like to correct something from my original post:

The drive IS detected in Ubuntu; it just won't mount. Does that give any further hope or would the steps mentioned above still need to be taken?

This is a proof that your drive suffers from the so called "slow responding" problem. Such a drive operates normally for about 30 sec after the power on, then goes to busy state for a long period...

First, I am assuming that you are not willing to spend money for professional data recovery, although you are willing to spend some money as you bought a board. If you data is not important enough to you to go for professional recovery, and you are willing to risk permanently losing the data trying to recover it yourself, then continue reading this post. Otherwise seek professional recovery and stop messing with the drive. With that being said…

If the drive is suffering from the “slow” issue, there is a POSSIBLE (affordable but not free) way to recover it via USB. The paid pro version of HDDSuperClone has a Direct USB mode that can be used with some settings to greatly speed up the cloning process, without fixing the slow issue. I say without fixing the slow issue because your drive is likely locked and the slow fix cannot be applied without special tools that are beyond the capability of HDDSuperTool. But before you pay for HDDSuperClone, you can try the free version (since you say that Linux can see the drive), and run the Analyze to see if the results are found to be a slow issue. If there is also a bad/weak head, the results will not be good. There are also videos for how to work with the slow issue with HDDSuperClone (link is on the website), and I would suggest you watch those before you consider purchasing a pro license. I am willing to offer limited help (one reply a day), but you would need to do your homework first, follow instructions, and not jump to conclusions. Also, there is no guarantee of success, only a possibility.

_________________
http://www.hddsuperclone.com
Home of HDDSuperClone

The board cost me a total of $6.66.
I'm not trying to cop out on professional help, I'm trying to gain experience in life and will turn to pros for help after exhausting my DIY efforts.
Thank you for your reply, I will look into it.

By the way, the drive is also seen in my Synology when I connect it to the back USB port but not mounted.