Need help with WD MyBook Essentials 3TB

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yeftani000

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Jul 24, 2013
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Hi,

I have a WDBACW0030HBK-SESN 3TB MyBook Essential that act strange. Everytime I plug it to the power source it let a very quiet buzzing sound. It's okay at first but now it can't turn on (it got powered on but even windows doesn't recognized that a drive has been inserted ie. not appeared on disk management nor device manager). After I open the enclosure it seems the sounds coming out from the USB bridge not the HDD itself (the disk still spins as normally it should. tried to insert the disk to pc just to test is it drive failure but turns out the drive was fine and windows ask to initialize it. As I knew that initializing drive would lead to data loss, I didn't do the process and remove the disk from pc and I've read everywhere before that this disk was hardware-encrypted.
I tried to go to local service point and they said maybe my bridge is the problem and the disk doesn't receive enough voltage. It was labeled as 4061-705089-001 Rev. AG but on the back of the board there's a number 4060-705089-001 REV. P1 printed on the board.

If I may ask some questions :
1. Did my data still intact?
2. Could it simply be fixed by changing the bridge with a similar board?
3. Did the newer WD MyBook Essential board works with mine (the new type box is blue one while mine were green) since there's nowhere here in my country (indonesia) that still had that type?
4. I've had an idea, what if i tried to power the disk using my pc cpu while connect the drive to the old bridge, would it works?
5. If my friend were kind enough, did borrowing his 4TB MyBook Essential of the same generation board could read my disk for backup process?

Thanks in advance, I really stressed out since I really don't want to lose my data and looking for the board is very hard here.
 
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yeftani000

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Jul 24, 2013
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I tried your suggestion by trying the bridge without the disk resulting :
- strange really low pitch buzzing noise from the bridge and same symptoms like it usually had (ie. not immediately turned on after being plugged in)
- nothing detected in USBDeview nor UVCView nor Device Manager

I now assume the problem is on the bridge, what's next?
and one more thing, I somewhere read your post about exposed 512e sector, did my data already gone or not, because when I test on PC, windows told me to initialize but I click cancel instead ok because i knew initializing the HDD means labeling it "there's nothing here"?
 
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fzabkar

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Sep 22, 2010
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Here is a similar PCB:

Western Digital My Book Essential bridge PCB, 4061-705094:
http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.php?f=112&t=1032

The buzzing could be coming from the 5V regulator.

The fact that the PCB doesn't enumerate via USBDeview is not necessarily conclusive. It all depends on the firmware. For example, some firmware will not identify the bridge if a drive is not present.

An end user told me that his PCB supplier advised him that two bridge PCBs are compatible if the first two sets of digits are the same (4060-705089) and the version is the same (Rev. AG).

The fact that the drive spins up would suggest that the bridge IC is switching on the +5V and +12V supplies via the dual MOSFET. This in turn would suggest that the PCB is mostly OK. The only common problem that would be consistent with these symptoms is bad connections at the USB connector.

Does the LED flash?

Can you upload a hires scan or photo of your PCB? Do you have a multimeter?
 
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yeftani000

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I tried to go to a local professional HDD recovery point with the board and they said the coil (+5V Regulator) might gone bad. and that's the first time they seen my board type since it's old. they also said that they usually used PCB 4061-705094 to try recovering their client's mybook lineup.

Here's the photo (using pocketcam with some tweak to make it clear, I only had pocket camera, sorry for the resolution) :
http://i.imgur.com/PTEAd93.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/A7RQzYu.jpg

Also, I had a friend that have WD MyBook Essential 3TB with PCB 4061-705094-001 Rev AE working, if it safe might gonna try using that (some ppl said that different board could lead to corruption of both drive so I won't do it for now). As for multitester, I don't have it but I could borrow one from my friend but I'm still not used in reading multitester.

For the LED, it's flashed but inconsistently, ie. it would blink 3 times then stop blinking and remain idle in on position (it usually turned off once the USB removed from PC), sometimes it would turned on but not as bright as it should and with stuttering light. it also not automatically powered on when connected to USB.
 
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fzabkar

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Sep 22, 2010
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A buzzing coil is not uncommon. It could simply be that its windings are loose. If you grab it or press on it, you may find that the buzzing stops or changes in quality. I would measure the voltage at the 220K coil or across the adjacent capacitors. This voltage should be +5V.

My 705094 bridge board flashes its LED constantly at about 2.7 times per second when the board is detached from the HDD. You might like to see if the behaviour is any different between USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports. I would also power up your friend's bridge PCB on its own and observe its LED behaviour, and whether it is detected by UVCVIew or USBDeview. That said, the fact that the LED flashes on and off, albeit erratically, proves that the bridge IC (U2) is not brain-dead. That's because U2 controls the LED directly (via a transistor).

My understanding of the circuit is as follows. The incoming 12VDC regulated supply is reduced to +5V by the DC-DC converter consisting of U5 and L10. This +5V supply is used by the HDD. The bridge board derives two additional supplies, Vcore and Vio, from the +5V rail via two DC-DC converters inside the bridge IC. These converters utilise coils L1 and L2. That's where you will find the Vio and Vcore test points.

The Vio rail supplies the serial flash memory IC at U4. U4 contains the bridge firmware. When the Vio and Vcore supplies rise to their specified levels, the bridge IC powers up and looks for external firmware. If the code in U4 checksums OK, then it is loaded into the bridge IC's internal RAM and executed. Otherwise, if U4 is corrupt or absent, then the bridge identifies itself using its internal Product and Vendor IDs, eg Symwave.

The bridge IC controls the power to the HDD via the dual MOSFET switch at U6. By controlling the Gate pins of each MOSFET, the bridge is able to switch each of the +12V and +5V supplies on or off. A common problem with these bridge PCBs is a failure in U6. The solution in such cases is to bypass each switch with a wire link.
 
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yeftani000

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Jul 24, 2013
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as I am not too familiar with electronic board, I tried visiting WD Service point in my city before importing the board, he said that my data was gone, but after I re check my disk at my pc again it seems that the partition table has changed from a single 2,7TB (when I first check it and do nothing) and now become 2 partition containing a 2TB and a 700GB partition.

heres the screenshot from diskmanager and DMDE:
http://i.imgur.com/7haOf4x.png
http://i.imgur.com/LbK41hG.png

now what should I do? did my data still there? would keep importing the board will save my data?

help please
 
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yeftani000

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Jul 24, 2013
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oh I see, now I'm too scared to do anything further avoiding any damage, I'll wait for my replacement board first then I'll report here again. thanks for your help until now, i'll continue follow up this thread
 
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fzabkar

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Contrary to what you have stated, it does appear that your drive has been initialised. The DMDE screenshots suggest that the boot sector and file system are intact, but that the partitions in sector 0 have been wiped.

http://i.imgur.com/r6DCxAm.png
http://i.imgur.com/0PTN8vw.png
http://i.imgur.com/sac0842.png
http://i.imgur.com/lRuoMnQ.png

Could we see the contents of sector 0 (select Mode -> Hexadecimal)?

If you doubleclick the "My Book" partition in DMDE's partitions window, do you see your original files and folders?
 
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yeftani000

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yes, its folder structure and files name is still intact, also here's the screenshot of sector 0

http://imgur.com/6Z0J0fe,eTTGpe4

What I must do next?
 
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yeftani000

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Jul 24, 2013
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From: fzabkar
Sent on: December 16, 2014 6:12 PM
Select Edit -> Edit Mode

Then write zeros to sector 0, and write 55 AA to the last 2 bytes.

Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
........
000001E0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
000001F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 AA

Select Drive -> Apply Changes

Select Drive -> Partitions

R-click your My Book partition and select Insert the Partition (Undelete)

Select Drive -> Apply Changes

Safely eject the drive as you normally would, then reconnect the drive so that the OS can re-examine the file system.

Best of luck.
Click to expand...

that's the solution, thank you all who helped, this case is now solved
 
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