WD Passport external drive dropped

bonzodog2

Not by me! I've been asked to look at this for a friend, a light comes on and it spins up but is not recognised. I've tried it in several computers, in XP and Linux.
It's a 2.5" drive inside, but not like a standard laptop drive. The PCB has a small USB socket directly on it.
I found replacement boards on ebay for about 55eur, but the seller suggested it might be necessary to take a particular chip (SMD) off the old board and solder onto new board.

I'm away from home right now, so I cant give the model right now.
Not sure what value the data is.
Any suggestions apart from expensive professionals ?

Fysh

If it's been dropped you're warranty is void anyway.

In terms of the actual disk itself, it's more than likely a standard 2.5" SATA jobbie - you can check this by looking up the model number, though. My advice is to open the enclosure, remove the USB-SATA bridge and try connecting it directly to a SATA port in a desktop machine (or through a different USB-SATA bridge if you've got one) and see if it works that way. If the drive is still working, a new enclosure's all you need - eg something like this.

If the drive doesn't work normally when connected directly through SATA, you're pretty much out of luck as far as cheap solutions go...

bonzodog2

bonzodog2 wrote: »

It's a 2.5" drive inside, but not like a standard laptop drive. The PCB has a small USB socket directly on it.

There is no separate bridge. No SATA pins. Its also thicker than a normal 9mm(?) laptop drive.

[edit] I think its actually a "Elements" rather than a Passport, or maybe Elements SE. I don't have it here now.

Yes, increasingly the drive inside many external HDDs is non-SATA.

If it was dropped I would say there is a 99% chance the HDD itself is damaged. The circuit board and connectors etc are much more robust than the HDD so its rare that they will be the ones damaged from a drop.

By all means try a controller board swap but don't get your hopes up.

The chip you are referring to is related to drive encryption. So find out if the drive supported encrytion - some WD models do and some don't. If the drive didn't have hardware encryption then you don't have to worry about it.

Fysh

Wha? Non-SATA interface?! Nuts to that! I guess that's another brand I'm adding to my departmental veto list then :mad:

(The veto list started after 3 incidents in which 2.5" portable drives had the same problem - the USB connector on the PCB breaking off due to crap solder. In all three cases, the manufacturers refused to allow us to open the enclosures and back up the drive data before sending them away for RMA, even though the RMA turnaround period was 4-6 weeks. The only exception to this I've found is Seagate's GoFlex range, which aren't cheap but are at least designed to let you get direct access to the SATA ports on the drives without voiding your warranty...)

TechPros

Is the drive making a "clicking" sound?

bonzodog2

No clicking, just spins.

TechPros

If it is not clicking, I would say you have a fair change of retrieving your data. I agree with "I Kill You Scum". I can recommend http://www.datarescue.ie if you would like someone else to try. I have used them in the past successfully.