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hard drive recovery wd my book

Tags:
  • Western Digital
  • Storage
  • Hard Drives
  • USB Connector
Last response: in Storage
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October 13, 2014 8:56:02 AM

I have a WD external hard I dropped on the floor with the cords still attached and broke the USB connector. I opened up the casing of the drive and noticed that only the USB connector was damaged and sheared off the motherboard that connects to the drive. The actual hard drive appears to be fully intact. Can I solder the metal USB connector back back to the board or does anyone know the board with the USB connection and power cord connection can be replaced?

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a c 360 G Storage
October 13, 2014 9:40:48 AM

I don't know about the feasibility of repairing the connection, but I do think you'll find that the drive's read/write heads and platters have been damaged by mechanical shock from dropping it. I'd be very surprised if they weren't. Such damage wouldn't be visible at all on the enclosure or on the metal drive casing.
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a c 327 G Storage
October 13, 2014 4:39:11 PM

If the drive's heads were parked on the loading ramp, then they may have survived the fall. You could attach the drive to a SATA port and see whether it is detected by BIOS. Note that you will be risking more damage if you do this.

Be aware that some drives (eg Essentials) are encrypted, in which case you will need the USB-SATA bridge board to decrypt your data. Still another problem is that 3TB external drives are configured with 4KB sectors rather than the usual 512 bytes.
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