Westen digital My book Data recovery

Hi first off if this has been posted before i very sorry.

I have a WD my book essential 2T i got in oct of last year, yes the warranty is good but if anyone has dealt with WD they know there support lacks.
the problem being there is over 500GB i really would not like to lose.
What happen to the my book case or rather the sata board is the mini usb came off, and from what i can tell there was not much holding it there in the first place. thought about try to fix but not sure my eyes can do it.

so what i have done is taken the Hdd out of the case and bought a usb to sata/ide cable with external power. I have tested the cable on my old laptop hdd works fine, i plug the WD in and it will load the drivers(Note the drivers are not the SES drivers). Now my PC shows the WD drive in the disk management as unallocated. The disk management is the only place it shows.
I am now running WD Data Lifeguard it see the a WDC WD20EADS-00SB0 (USB)
and also sees my Hitachi that is in my computer.
i have tried to switch the drivers from the WDC WD20EADS-00SB0 to the SES driver but i was unsuccessful. may not have done that right.
I am at a lose and really don't know where to start next.
I am fair with most computers and software but this hdd is getting the best of me.
Any suggestions or questions please.

My system is an Acer aspire 5534
OS win 7 64bit
Ati radeon hd3200
250gb Hitachi
4gb ddr2

 

I am not sure if it will help in your case but you may want to try Minitools Power Data Recovery. Free for home use. If Minitools does not see it, you may want to see if Puppy Linux Live CD can see the drive.

http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/

 

It sounds like the MBR or some other part of the partition is corrupt. You could try running testdisk to recover the partition there is a guide on how to use test disk here

 

Hi

If the above doesn't work, a paid program, iCare Data Recovery, has worked very well for me in retrieving the data off of drives, including drives that are in the same situation yours appears to be in.

http://www.icare-recovery.com/

 

Thanks all
I will try this and will report back.

 

Ok guys i have run the tools listed and am not getting anything.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery 6.5
Is only showing about 160mb of .swf files not sure what they are.

testdisk-6.12
On deep scan shows nothing and i mean nothing.

iCare Data Recovery Software
i am going to see if the trail finds anything. and as you all know this all takes about 24hr to run.

so any other ideas i may try?

 

When you look at the drive in Disk Management where is says Disk # in the graph section is it showing dynamic or basic?

 

Sorry it took me you know how it is.
Anyway it shows basic. and unallocated.
Witch i know is wrong, Question is it possible for the pc board that come with it to have some sort of encrypt er or something. that makes it only readable by one type of driver?

 

That testdisk doesn't see anything is not good.

Because it shows as Basic and Unallocatted in Disk Management, I think it might be worth a try to see if either Partition Wizard (same maker as powerdatarecovery so may not do much good--but not much to lose) or Easeus Partition Master using their Partition Recovery option find anything. Basically click on the Disk # and right-click and select Partition Recovery.

I believe Easeus is completely automatic and immediately restores any partition it finds. Partition Wizard lists what it finds and you can double click a partition to see a list of files. I would try Partition Wizard first. http://www.partitionwizard.com/help/partition-recovery.html

 

OK I'll put it to the test tonight, will most likely take a day or so to read it and we will see what comes up.

 

Wow, that is long time. Try the Full disk and Quick scan option. If it finds a partition it just skips to the end instead of reading everything sector by sector. If it doesn't find a partition then it will take quite a while.

 

Oh ok well let me see here give it a go right fast

 

well quick scan is at 3% lol going to take some time i think lol

 

Yes, it is not sounding good. I think that means it is effectively doing a full scan because it hasn't found anything obvious. (I'm pretty sure all these programs use the same basic engine to search the disk.) I'm not hopeful if TestDisk failed to find anything. I'm not sure what else to try.

 

mini tools data recovery tool found it was like 160mb of swf files but that was it and the files are not anything of mine.

 

It is sounding to me that without the original enclosure working that data retrieval may be impossible due to automatic encryption. Take a look at the first couple of links from google.

 

OK let me ask this one.
If i get another mybook take it apart and use the pc board from it to get my info off it. will that work or is it hdd specific and I'm still f-ed and does it matter if its a 1tb where as mine is a 2tb?


Next question is there a good drive out that has fair customer service and good performance.

 

If the drive is dead then the data is gone. Doesnt matter what you plug it into. You should be able to replace it with any 2.5" HD

 

The drive is not dead it is the damn interface that is dead.
I know now that the interface is hdd specific and the encryption that it uses to write the data is making it imposable to retrieve the data. The drive can be formatted and read by the computer but i still lose the data that way.
i am going to the local pc shop tomorrow to see if he can put a new mini usb on the interface so i can get my data. If not going to format and start from scratch.

 

Sorry about my last post sounded worse then i intended.
I just getting fed up with the thing.

 

No Worries.

I think I am missing something here. What makes you think the interface is dead? If the interface is dead the your drive would simply not appear. It also depends on what you mean by interface. External HDs are simply internal HDs in an enclosure with a SATA to USB adapter. You appear to be reffering to the SATA to USB adapter and I dont see that as the issue? Assuming you have access to a Desktop PC you could simply open the case remove the HD and try plugging it in as an internal drive. This will rule out issues with the enclosure. If you mean tha actual interface on the HD then you could probably buy just the HD rather than the whole mybook and replace the interface. I think that would be a bit more complex than that though.

 

Additionally, have a look at this

Dont bother getting the USB replaced coz I can almost gaurentee that is not the problem. If you only have a laptop get one of the cables linked above and connect the actual HD to your USB port. If you still cant read it then the drive is dead.

 

OK the adapter the sata to usb that came with the mybook, the mini usb that was on the adapter came off. i have an extra usb to sata/ide adapter and it see the hdd as unallocated this appears to be because the adapter that came with it used some sort of encryption, that can only be read by that hdd specific adapter. if you look at sach2s post from 09-09 that will help some.
in all it BS should have not come off in the first place. after looking at where the mini usb goes i find that it was only attached by the connections so it was going to come off sooner or later.

 

@Tueur Yes, it appears that that type of external drive has some type of board within the enclosure that has it's own protocol for data transfer that includes encrypting the information. The mini-USB is attached to that board. when the adapter breaks off you lose access to the board and the encrypting protocol.

The HD inside is just a normal WD drive (whose own circuit board is fine) and can be recognized by way of a standard connection or standard USB SATA cable but is seen as an empty drive. Data recovery is impossible without connection to the the board attached to the mini-USB adapter.

The only possibility of data recovery I see is getting someone to repair the miniUSB connection to its board without doing any damage to the circuitry. (If the data really is encrypted, as the post I linked to as well as others I have read seem to believe, I don't think buying a similar model My Book and putting it in that enclosure will do any good.)

@MichaelJMAD, Is there no way to hold the mini USB to its place on the board for a one-time transfer?

 

Page 2 of this thread has some pictures of the situation.

 

@sach2
Thanks for the better explanation.
As for holding in place no i have tried and can not get it right, do to how it all goes together here are some pics of my hdd and the adapter.

http://s137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/michaelslyfox/hdd/?action=view&current=GEDC0003copy.jpg

http://s137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/michaelslyfox/hdd/

 

I know nothing about soldering other than copper plumbing pipes in an emergency and with help of my brother. Bad circuit board connections: I know even less about as far as how solder works in terms of conductivity or how temporary connections can be made.:confused

It seems the five pins in the center are the actual information connection and the four foot pads are just for holding it to the board. Could any of the foot pads be keeping you from getting a connection to the board--Would angling work to make a temporary connection?

I hope someone with soldering skills can give you their appraisal of the situation. I just don't know how difficult a job it is or the likelihood of success.

 

i'll have to look but not sure if theirs enough to make a good contact long enough to get anything off or what we will see. hopefully be able to talk the the pc guy in town soon.

 

OK, that makes sense now. I think you are going to have to re solder the micro USB. I have never heard of anyone encrypting a drive like that and I see no point in doing it. It is the most rediculous thing I have heard and I certainly wont be recomending a WD external drive to anyone. Unfortunately if you cant re-solder the USB then I think your data will be lost.

Even if you can resolder it I would be tempted to buy a non-encrypting external, Copy the data off, reformat in the new enclosure without encryption then copy the data back. I would also look at a robust backup system.

 

weather i can get the data or not that is the last time i use that adapter even if i send the whole thing back to WD for replacement I'll use the drive but nothing else

as for robust its called DVDR

 

Hey guys just wanted to post the latest.
I tried all the above even the payware no luck at all, none of them found anything.
However i did some research into the encryption algorithm, apparently if you can get the right encryption key you can break it. I was not able to find said key as each adapter has a slight difference, the only place to get said key that i have found is to work for one of WD approved data recovers. I did format the drive it self. And used my own adapter witch worked for about a week. Then i do not know what happen the computer quit reading the drive said i needed to format to read. again i used the partitions software and nothing could be found. so the conclusion is that i will not be buying WD products anytime soon. And am in the market for a new external drive. Any suggestions of a good reliable drive?

P.S. i did try my adapter on another HDD and works fine.

 

This has happen to our company WD 3TB drive. all of a sudden the drive was no where to be found and the disk manager shows it as partitioned in 2TB and 780GB partitioned - both unallocated ... I am stumped... I search everything I can - still nothing.
Easeus finds a bunch of .GZ and .SWF files - which appear like that's the data because there's GBs worth of stuff in them but nothing I can find on how to get the encryption fixed back. Really need some of those files ... anything new on the subject ????confused:confused