Have a Western Digital Passport WD10TMVW that initially came in with a damaged set of heads. I swapped the heads, the drive comes ready, it images extremely fast, but as soon as it hits an unreadable sector, it's like it runs into a brick wall and you can't do anything more with the drive until you reset it by unplugging and then plugging it back in. It's a USB drive, with the built in USB port so I don't have the option to use DDI. I've used Media Tools, WinHex and a few others just trying to get an image but I hate to keep repowering the driving like this.

When I have it connected via Windows, it trees up the directory, and I can see all of the files without any problem at all. However, if I try to recover the data in WinHex, R-Studio, or any other utility, as soon as it hits a bad sector, it just starts skipping all subsequent sectors until you reset the drive again. Any ideas how to get around this?

Adopt Sata pcb or solder sata pins.

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Angel Data Recovery

Exactly so!

Then bypass the encryption if has it

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Yep.
I think that's the safest way also, or one of that so many resets, it might die.

I have been looking through stacks of WD sata drives here that are close to the same capacity, and I can't seem to find one that has the same board layout as this one. I've looked on Ebay for drives with similar model numbers, starting with the WD10T, but I haven't been able to see a PCB on those drives either to see if they look like they might match up. Also there's the possibility this drive may be encrypted like so many others. This particular PCB doesn't appear to have an Initio chip, however it does have a Symwave BGA chip, in the same location that you would normally see the Initio.

Maybe some of them are USB2 and some are USB3.

What is the model number? the complete number?

I guess this is USB3, if so your HD is probably Zephyr. Tell me full model number or PCB code I can tell you compatible SATA PCB.

WD10TMVW-11ZSMS1

This is Helios series, I think PCB code is 771737 For SATA equivalent you need use Zephyr SATA which example is WD6400BPVT-22HXZT1 with PCB code of 771692

not always

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

But for me on many many occasions it is. I am confident that it will work for this case also.

You have alternative idea on it?

Would this still work even if the drive uses standard passport encryption?