Magnet Killed WD External Drives

Rally · 10-31-2009, 05:44 PM

For sheer negligence, this can't be beat.

I stored 4 small external WD drives in a drawer next to a powerful magnet. Probably a few months. These were the popular small ones, that started off around 40 or 80 GB, up to around 500GB, powered off the USB and plugging into USB.

All 4 are, essentially, hosed. But, wait for it. A further complication is that all 4 were Truecrypt encoded.

I considered trying some kind of data recovery software on them, hoping that not all data is gone. However, my Vista computer does not even see a hard drive. Truecrypt does not see anything when I tell it to Automount all.

And I just well and truly hosed, or is there anything I can try just on the off chance? Thanks.

**raptor_pa** · 10-31-2009, 07:07 PM

This would have to be one pretty powerful magnet. It certainly seems tho that you may have degaussed the drives. If that is the case, then the service area of the disks has also been hammerred, basically rendering the drives dead. The service area contains the startup firmware code and the modules that the drive actually uses to coordinate it's operation. The head map, p-list, g-list, ata command code and a lot more. Without the service area code, the drive is effectively unable to start. You could try pulling the drives and mount them in a desktop. If the drives identify correctly to BIOS then there may be a chance for recovery. Try that, let us know the results and we'll see what the next step may be.

10-31-2009, 05:44 PM	#1 (permalink)
Rally Registered User Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 1 OS: Vista Home Premium	Magnet Killed WD External Drives For sheer negligence, this can't be beat. I stored 4 small external WD drives in a drawer next to a powerful magnet. Probably a few months. These were the popular small ones, that started off around 40 or 80 GB, up to around 500GB, powered off the USB and plugging into USB. All 4 are, essentially, hosed. But, wait for it. A further complication is that all 4 were Truecrypt encoded. I considered trying some kind of data recovery software on them, hoping that not all data is gone. However, my Vista computer does not even see a hard drive. Truecrypt does not see anything when I tell it to Automount all. And I just well and truly hosed, or is there anything I can try just on the off chance? Thanks.

10-31-2009, 07:07 PM	#2 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,933 OS: XP	Re: Magnet Killed WD External Drives This would have to be one pretty powerful magnet. It certainly seems tho that you may have degaussed the drives. If that is the case, then the service area of the disks has also been hammerred, basically rendering the drives dead. The service area contains the startup firmware code and the modules that the drive actually uses to coordinate it's operation. The head map, p-list, g-list, ata command code and a lot more. Without the service area code, the drive is effectively unable to start. You could try pulling the drives and mount them in a desktop. If the drives identify correctly to BIOS then there may be a chance for recovery. Try that, let us know the results and we'll see what the next step may be. __________________