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WD My Book Essentials Bad controller?

5K views 39 replies 3 participants last post by  spunk.funk 
#1 ·
Was backing some stuff up on my WD MyBook and it just stopped working..... I restarted it and it said it needed to be formatted to proceed. WTH? After poking around on the internet it seems that the controller cards can go bad. I called WD and they tried to help me diagnose it but failed. The computer is trying to read it when its plugged in and that makes the whole computer hang up. The WD diagnostic tools wont even do anything until I unplug the drive.

Does anyone know if there are other cards compatible with the drive I have aside from the one that in it? The broken drive is a 2TB, I have another 1.5TB here but has a different controller card. Anyone know if it will work?


I can give you numbers off the cards...
 
#2 ·
Can you upload photos of both sides of the USB-SATA bridge PCB and the HDD PCB?

If you connect the drive to a SATA port on your computer's motherboard, does BIOS detect it? Don't be tempted to initialise or format your drive, as doing so would be data destructive.

If you connect the bridge PCB to a USB port on its own, does UVCView or USBDeview detect it?

View any installed/connected USB device on your system
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/b/a/eba1050f-a31d-436b-9281- 92cdfeae4b45/UVCView.x64.exe
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_IDs/UVCView.x86.exe
 
#3 ·
All other manufactures of external USB HDD's use a standard SATA HDD connected to a USB controller with standard connections like in a Notebook or Desktop computer However, WD has created a proprietary pin structure for their drives and controllers on their externals so that these drives can only be used in a WD enclosure.
If the drive is still under warranty, you can send it back to WD for a free refurbished one in return.
If the data on the drive is crucial, your only alternative to recover the files is to send it off to the very, very expensive Data Recovery Specialists who will access the drive in a Clean Room. Most people can't afford this option.
 
#4 ·
All other manufactures of external USB HDD's use a standard SATA HDD connected to a USB controller with standard connections like in a Notebook or Desktop computer However, WD has created a proprietary pin structure for their drives and controllers on their externals so that these drives can only be used in a WD enclosure.
That's not true. The drives in My Books are standard 3.5" SATA models that can be repurposed for normal internal desktop use. Passport models (2.5") generally integrate the bridge electronics on the HDD PCB, but even then there are DIY methods to access the data via SATA, depending on the user's level of skill.

That said, Essentials models are encrypted, so you will need the USB-SATA bridge firmware to decrypt the data. Furthermore, the standard My Book firmware configuration comes with a sector size of 4KB which means that even unencrypted models (Elements) will have data accessibility problems via SATA (which is a 512e interface).

WD's models can often be recovered after applying the "slow fix". This is described at the HDD Oracle forum and HDD Guru.
 
#5 ·
Based on my readings, the drive is encrypted with the usb controller thats plugged into the drive. The only way to salvage the data is to find a working controller with the same number on it which is pretty easy to find, but they are the same price if not more than a whole drive and most of them are AS IS, NO WARRANTY which I find to be BS. I will gamble the $60 for the one I found on Amazon.
 
#6 ·
I was hoping someone knew another way to salvage the data. Also, this is not a SATA drive which is strange..... I have seen some older ones that were but this 2-3 year old MyBook is an IDE? long flat connector. I'm embarrassed...... I am forgetting the names of some of these things! Technology is moving to fast. lol
 
#26 ·
#29 ·
Those are two different animals. If the drive boots and is seen by Disk Management, then it's not a Firmware problem. If the Firmware was mismatched the drive would not even start or be recognized.
the Master Boot Record is like a table of contents. TestDisk will try and recover files from the partition by passing the MBR.
 
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