1

Hi, everyone,

I have a customer’s old WD Elements 1TB drive from 2010 that is unrecognizable by any operating system or BIOS. It’s one of those with only a Micro USB-B connector only, no SATA. It spins up, shows a solid LED, and there’s no “click of death.” Also, I’ve removed and examined the board, and there’s no visible damage or scorching.

I’ve found a donor board I could purchase for a reasonable price, and I’m fairly comfortable swapping out the drive’s BIOS chip, but before I do, I’d like opinions as to whether there’s even a likelihood that this would revive it. I’ll look forward to your replies, and thanks in advance.

4 Spice ups
2

I’ve worked with someone who said they knew a guy who disassembled a hard drive that had a head crash, and installed the platters into a new hard drive of the same type - and it worked.

If you can get a working disk that matches the specs; I’d say it is worth a shot. If you have the time and inclination, what have you got to lose if the current drive doesn’t work anyway?

Good luck!

3

It could be that it just lacks enough power as I have seen that sometimes. You can use a double ended USB (one power and data and the other just data) to Micro USB so that it can draw double the power to get to speed.

4

Thanks. I’m thinking it might be worthwhile, and the customer knows the cost of the new board is on her. I don’t think it’s a head issue, though - there’s no characteristic Click Of Death.

5

It’s spinning up fine, so I don’t think it’s lack of power. Also, these drives had only a single cable out of the box, not a two-to-one. Thanks, though.

6

Quick update: I plugged it into my bench machine running PartEd Magic, and after about a half hour, it showed up as a device. I immediately ran ddrescue to see what I could recover, but it recovered only a few MB, with a multi-gigabyte error size, before it threw the error “input file disappeared: no such file or directory,” and the device had disappeared from the list. Not sure if this is helpful in determining whether this is a board issue, though.

7

The characteristics that you describe of appearing to spin up and data appearing and disappearing can be caused by insufficient power which is why I recommended that cable. You can also try an external USB powered hub or maybe a USB3 port.

If you swap the board you may have to identify and swap the ROM as well on it as it contains the individual platter characteristics.

8

Good idea on the powered hub or USB3 port. Also, I’m aware of the ROM swap, and am prepared for that. Thanks.

9

UPDATE: I do not have a dual-powered USB cable of that type, but neither a powered hub nor a USB3 port made any difference.