please help me recover damaged hard drive

G

gib65

Member
Hello,

I have an external drive that's been damaged. When I plug it into my computer, it recognizes it as "My Passport 259F". But it won't mount it. I can't really do anything with it except see that it's there.

I'm wondering if someone can help me troubleshoot this. Really, all I want to do is try to get the data off it. What can I try?
 
Go into disk management and see if you just need to assign a drive letter to it.
 
voyagerfan99 said:
Go into disk management and see if you just need to assign a drive letter to it.
Click to expand...

Here's what I see in device manager:

device manager.png


I'm not sure how to tell if there's an option assign a drive letter to it.
 
Ok, got it. Here's what disk management shows me:

disk management.png


It shows up as "Disk 1 - Unknown - Not Initialize". If I right-click, it gives me the option to initialize. But if I click initialize, it tells me "The request failed due to a fatal device hardware error."
 
The disk or enclosure is damaged. You can try and get it out of the case and see if you can connect it with a USB adapter, but I'm not sure if the HDD will have a proprietary connection on it for that enclosure or not.
 
I wouldn't even bother to remove it from the case. Unless it's a really old My Passport, the USB bridge is built right into the drive. So there's no regular SATA connection to be found. It is possible to replace the PCB with a SATA one along with transferring the U12 chip. If you provide me the PCB number starting with 2060-771xxxxx-xxx I can tell you which SATA board is compatible.

However if it's like 95% of the failed My Passport drives we see here at the data recovery lab, the problem will be failed read/write heads and it'll require clean room work.

Just out of curiosity is the drive even spinning? Is is clicking or spinning down after power up?
 
JaredDM said:
I wouldn't even bother to remove it from the case. Unless it's a really old My Passport, the USB bridge is built right into the drive. So there's no regular SATA connection to be found. It is possible to replace the PCB with a SATA one along with transferring the U12 chip. If you provide me the PCB number starting with 2060-771xxxxx-xxx I can tell you which SATA board is compatible.

However if it's like 95% of the failed My Passport drives we see here at the data recovery lab, the problem will be failed read/write heads and it'll require clean room work.

Just out of curiosity is the drive even spinning? Is is clicking or spinning down after power up?
Click to expand...

It makes a few clicking sounds when I plug it in. It seems to stay inactive for a good 20 to 30 seconds, then starts clicking. It will do that about 3 or 4 times about 10 seconds apart, and then nothing.

I couldn't find a PCB number (not on the enclosure anyhow) but I scanned it. What can you make of this:

My Passport 259F.jpg
 
Okedokey said:
Take the HD out of the enclosure and connect it to the computer directly, it will have a SATA port. Otherwise you will need to recover the linux partition used on the cady to allow access. http://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?h=p1&ID=14925&lang=en&p=232
Click to expand...

That link is for the My Cloud not the My Passport. It's not going to have a SATA port, trust me I work on these drives full time. No My Passport drive has had a native SATA port since the days of around 320Gb. His is a 3TB. They have never put a SATA HDD in a 3Tb My Passport.

It'll look just like this inside:
 
Last edited:
@OP, if the drive is clicking as you say then you'll need pro recovery. The drives read/write heads have failed, and nothing you're going to DIY is going to help even a little bit. In fact anything and everything you try, even just plugging it in, is dropping the chances that you'll ever get the data back.

If it's not critical data, just dump it and move on. If it's worth more than $700 to you, then you should opt for pro recovery. If you let me know where you're located I may be able to offer some recommendations on where to go.
 
Thanks for the help everyone, but it looks like this is a lost cause. It's definitely not worth enough to take it to a pro. So I'm just going to count my losses. Again, thanks anyway.
 
My advice would be to just put it aside somewhere safe for a while, just in case you later realize there was something on there you can't re-create or can't live without. You'd probably be looking at a recovery somewhere around $900-1000 in total for a pro to do it. I know our price for a 3Tb My Passport that's clicking is $700 + parts, just to give you a baseline.
 
If the drive is clicking, then just replacing the PCB or adapting it to be SATA won't help anyway.

And the problem they don't tell you about in that Salvation Data blog is that if you bypass the SATA bridge chip via removing the resistors and soldering in, or by replacing the PCB with a SATA one (much easier) the data will be encrypted.

(Just FYI Salvation Data is the joke of the recovery world, their tools notoriously don't work... period)
 
Okedokey said:
The clicking is almost always the PCB, and earlier model wd didn't have the encryption issue.
Click to expand...

Umm, both of these statements are 100% false. Out of nearly 1000 cases of clicking My Passport recoveries we've handled, exactly 1 was a PCB issue and it shocked everyone to discover that. Also, WD My Passports since the 500Gb range have all had onboard encryption. The OP is inquiring regarding a 3TB model which will absolutely be encrypted unless it was purchased in one of the few countries where encryption is banned by the government.
 
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