Reviving my WD hard drive

[IAmAndre]

My old external drive stopped working a few months ago. It would spin without making any sound in particular, but it wouldn't be recognized by any PC and OS. Today, I took it apart to see if there was something I could do about it. Unfortunately, it doesn't have SATA connectors. I think that these are IDE connectors (see image below), and I've never used any of these. I'm still able to connect the USB cable that came with it (I also tried another one) but is there anything else that I can try to be able to recover data at least.

 

Thanks

Spoiler

 

[FilipSebik]

If you have disassembled it then RIP forever

[IAmAndre]

1 minute ago, FilipSebik said:

If you have disassembled it then RIP forever

Why is that? I just took it out of the "case".

[CoffeeandBagels]

IDE to SATA Converter. You will also need an IDE cable with looks like a ribbon.

 

https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/StarTech.com-6in-Slimline-SATA-to-SATA-Adapter-with-Power-F-M-SATA-adap/2855507.aspx?cm_cat=GoogleBase&cm_ite=2855507&cm_pla=NA-NA-STP_DV&cm_ven=acquirgy&ef_id=VbKlqwAAADSiJXYY:20160428135915:s&gclid=Cj0KEQjw6Ya5BRDdyOewyo_Z_64BEiQA-fVKe-qNTOygFVN29SMJQKhRl6ACTGQUeY2Je-paJ-zJ7IAaAvNJ8P8HAQ&s_kwcid=AL!4223!3!58786190179!!!g!154934184551!

 

http://www.newegg.com/IDE-Cables/SubCategory/ID-2818

[FilipSebik]

1 hour ago, IAmAndre said:

Why is that? I just took it out of the "case".

Then its not disassembly but "remove out of the case"

[IAmAndre]

3 minutes ago, CoffeeandBagels said:

IDE to SATA Converter. You will also need an IDE cable with looks like a ribbon.

 

https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/StarTech.com-6in-Slimline-SATA-to-SATA-Adapter-with-Power-F-M-SATA-adap/2855507.aspx?cm_cat=GoogleBase&cm_ite=2855507&cm_pla=NA-NA-STP_DV&cm_ven=acquirgy&ef_id=VbKlqwAAADSiJXYY:20160428135915:s&gclid=Cj0KEQjw6Ya5BRDdyOewyo_Z_64BEiQA-fVKe-qNTOygFVN29SMJQKhRl6ACTGQUeY2Je-paJ-zJ7IAaAvNJ8P8HAQ&s_kwcid=AL!4223!3!58786190179!!!g!154934184551!

 

http://www.newegg.com/IDE-Cables/SubCategory/ID-2818

Thanks. I'll try to get one of these on eBay. Now I'm curious to know how it works. As you can see on the picture, there is from right to left (correct me if I'm wrong) the pins that allows you to set the drive to master or slave mode, the USB port and the IDE connectors. I assume that the USB ports is for power and data, so is the IDE connector never used? How could the drive be powered without using the USB cable?

[CoffeeandBagels]

4 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Thanks. I'll try to get one of these on eBay. Now I'm curious to know how it works. As you can see on the picture, there is from right to left (correct me if I'm wrong) the pins that allows you to set the drive to master or slave mode, the USB port and the IDE connectors. I assume that the USB ports is for power and data, so is the IDE connector never used? How could the drive be powered without using the USB cable?

Master and slave (or, primary and secondary hard drives) are determined by placing jumpers across those pins. However, if you are hooking this up to SATA via a converter, I don't think this will be something you have to worry about.

 

Look at the different converter options before you settle on one. I'm not 100% clear on what you need to change the IDE standard to, but there are a couple of different things like USB or SATA or whatever.

 

Best of luck.

[Captain_WD]

22 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

~snip~

Hey there

What was the drive's model (the external one)? Does it feature hardware encryption? 

From the photos it seems that the USB port is soldered on the PCB. If that's the case you may try a cable and see if it works on a PC and if it's recognized in BIOS. Some other photos from other sides would be useful too, as well as on the enclosure.

Captain_WD.

[IAmAndre]

18 minutes ago, CoffeeandBagels said:

Master and slave (or, primary and secondary hard drives) are determined by placing jumpers across those pins. However, if you are hooking this up to SATA via a converter, I don't think this will be something you have to worry about.

 

Look at the different converter options before you settle on one. I'm not 100% clear on what you need to change the IDE standard to, but there are a couple of different things like USB or SATA or whatever.

 

Best of luck.

Do you think that this would do it ? http://www.ebay.com/itm/HOT-2-5-Male-IDE-To-7-15-Pin-Female-SATA-HDD-SSD-Converter-Adapter-For-laptop-/251758941778?hash=item3a9e009652:g:35sAAOSw3d1TzcqF

I mean I would still have to connect to USB cable to power it, right?

[CoffeeandBagels]

3 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Do you think that this would do it ? http://www.ebay.com/itm/HOT-2-5-Male-IDE-To-7-15-Pin-Female-SATA-HDD-SSD-Converter-Adapter-For-laptop-/251758941778?hash=item3a9e009652:g:35sAAOSw3d1TzcqF

I mean I would still have to connect to USB cable to power it, right?

yes and yes

[IAmAndre]

11 minutes ago, Captain_WD said:

Hey there

What was the drive's model (the external one)? Does it feature hardware encryption? 

From the photos it seems that the USB port is soldered on the PCB. If that's the case you may try a cable and see if it works on a PC and if it's recognized in BIOS. Some other photos from other sides would be useful too, as well as on the enclosure.

Captain_WD.

Here's what I found on the case :

Spoiler

The USB is soldered indeed. I don't there's a lot to issue on the sides but I'll upload new pictures in a minute. The drive is somehow recognized as a device, but not as a hard drive with the different OS I tried (Windows and Linux).

[IAmAndre]

11 minutes ago, CoffeeandBagels said:

yes and yes

Well actually I don't think this is what I need, same for all the cables to mentioned earlier : what I need is a female IDE to female SATA converter. I can't find any.

[CoffeeandBagels]

3 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Well actually I don't think this is what I need, same for all the cables to mentioned earlier : what I need is a female IDE to female SATA converter. I can't find any.

You will need a cable to run from your hard drive to the converter. It's a big clunky ugly cable and I know it sucks, but you are going to make your life harder trying to avoid this.

[IAmAndre]

I hope this helps

 

PS : This picture looks nice btw, doesn't it?

[xentropa]

Does it show up in disk management?

 

The most dire way to recover your data is to send it to a professional center where they will take the HDD disk platters out your drive in a clean room and then get the data off.  I have never seen that process cost less than 2500 dollars though.

[IAmAndre]

1 hour ago, xentropa said:

Does it show up in disk management?

 

The most dire way to recover your data is to send it to a professional center where they will take the HDD disk platters out your drive in a clean room and then get the data off.  I have never seen that process cost less than 2500 dollars though.

Yeah it's quite expensive and definitely not worth it since I'm not losing important data, just big files that I would rather avoid downloading again (around 1TB). The disk doesn't show up in disk management, it is just recognized as a USB device.

[xentropa]

8 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

Yeah it's quite expensive and definitely not worth it since I'm not losing important data, just big files that I would rather avoid downloading again (around 1TB). The disk doesn't show up in disk management, it is just recognized as a USB device.

When it just shows up as an unknown USB device, either the drive is damaged or somehow your plug and play drivers messed up.  You can try plugging it into another PC to see if the latter is true.

[Captain_WD]

On 28.04.2016 г. at 5:48 PM, IAmAndre said:

~snip~

The photo does look quite good indeed

 

If the drive pops up as a USB devise I would think there's either a problem with the drivers, the drive's partition table or the drive has failed physically beyond repair. I don't think connecting it with other than a USB cable would help and if it's even doable. As @xentropa suggested, trying the drive on different computers may result in it showing up in either device manager or disk management.

 

Captain_WD.

[IAmAndre]

2 hours ago, Captain_WD said:

The photo does look quite good indeed

 

If the drive pops up as a USB devise I would think there's either a problem with the drivers, the drive's partition table or the drive has failed physically beyond repair. I don't think connecting it with other than a USB cable would help and if it's even doable. As @xentropa suggested, trying the drive on different computers may result in it showing up in either device manager or disk management.

 

Captain_WD.

I think that this a hard failure. I noticed that after connecting the hard drive, even though the LED light turns on there is much less activity/vibration than on my other drive, almost no activity. I think that it's no longer spinning. I just hear some kind of buzz.

[Captain_WD]

1 hour ago, IAmAndre said:

~snip~

Are you using the cable that came with the enclosure? If the drive does this with that cable or a similar one (that won't allow under-powering) then I'd say it has failed. Contacting our live support may also give you some useful info.

 

Captain_WD.

[IAmAndre]

On 5/3/2016 at 1:42 PM, Captain_WD said:

Are you using the cable that came with the enclosure? If the drive does this with that cable or a similar one (that won't allow under-powering) then I'd say it has failed. Contacting our live support may also give you some useful info.

 

Captain_WD.

Yes I'm using the cable that came with it. I think it's a failure. Luckily I didn't have important data on it.

[Captain_WD]

16 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

~snip~

It does look like the drive is on its way to a better, bad sector-free place. Swap it around on a few different computers and see if the results are the same. Our support may be your last chance to get some useful info, otherwise I'd consider this drive failed. 

 

Captain_WD.