WD External drives: circuit board question (for the techs)

Hello. Many (all?) WD external drives come with a circuit board (interfaces between drive and box power+data connections). Why when I connect (out of warranty) WD external drives directly to SATA power+data cables does Windows think the drive hasn’t been initialised? Am I correct in thinking that the WD circuit boards provide a proprietary access to drives such that without them drives cannot be accessed? Thanks.

This is quote from fzabkar in another thread (scroll down)  : Is the drive a My Book Essentials? If so, then the data will have been encrypted by the USB-SATA bridge board inside the enclosure

http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-PC/Removed-D4-diode-1-0-TB-Caviar-Green-now-powers-up-but-not/td-p/836071

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JoeySmyth wrote:

If so, then the data will have been encrypted by the USB-SATA bridge board inside the enclosure

 

Thanks. That explains alot. I’ll ask fzabkar if he has a list of bridges that encrypt. What a terrible design (IMHO).  Thanks.

PS. the drive in question is a My Book Premium Edition (the one with the blue circle).

Essentials models are encrypted (except in those markets where encryption is illegal, eg Russia).

Passport models are usually encrypted.

BTW, when Windows is telling you that your drive needs to be initialised, it means that it cannot make sense of the partition information in sector 0.

If instead Windows is telling that the file system is raw and that the volume needs to be formatted, then this is probably due to the fact that some enclosures (eg 3TB/4TB My Books) are configured with 4KB sector sizes. When you install such a drive inside your computer, you expose the drive’s native 512e sectoring. Sector 0 is still in the same place, so the partition information is still accessible, but every other sector is out by a factor of 8. In other words, you now have a 4Kn file system on a 512e physical drive.

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fzabkar wrote:
Essentials models are encrypted (except in those markets where encryption is illegal, eg Russia).

Passport models are usually encrypted.

Thanks Franc (I think your name is).  When you say these models are encrypted do you mean that is how they come from the factory or does the user have any control over whether encryption is on/off?  Thanks.

PS. I will issue a separate post on a successful data recovery of a WD Book Live (single drive).

The user doesn’t have any control of the encryption. It’s handled by the circuit board.

Joe

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Joe_S wrote:

The user doesn’t have any control of the encryption. It’s handled by the circuit board.

Joe

Thanks. So if you don’t want encryption on an external drive avoid Essentials and Passport? Seems an overly/unnecessary complicated design by WD.

I have a WD10EADS HD.  IT was a 1.0 TB elements drive and it is about 6 yrs old.  The USB connector broke on the adapter PCB.  It was replaced once about 1.5 years ago.  The usb connecttor broke again this time, taking all of the traces from the adapter PCB and rendering it useless.

I punch in 4061-705062-000 Rev AA in google and I find several vendors ( ebay mainly) selling this part.  Will it work or will it just be wasting m money?

Thaks

Robert