I’m really hoping someone can help me out here - this drive has years of family photos and important files I never backed up elsewhere.
Here’s what happened:
I have a WD My Book 1TB external hard drive, pretty old. The USB port on the controller board was damaged, looked rusty, and stopped working properly.
So I took the drive apart, removed the controller board, and connected the bare SATA HDD directly to my PC using SATA cables.
When I opened File Explorer… it showed 930GB free out of 930GB total - like the drive was empty. But I know there was over 600GB of data on it before it stopped working.
I panicked, shut down my PC immediately, and haven’t touched the drive since - didn’t want to risk overwriting anything.
Now I’m stuck. Is the data gone? Or could this be a file system issue?
Should I:
- Try resoldering the original controller board and plug the drive in normally?
- Connect it again directly to the PC, but use recovery tools this time?
- Or just take it to a pro and avoid messing it up more?
Main questions:
- Is there still a chance the files are recoverable?
- Will reconnecting the drive delete anything if I don’t write new data?
- What should I try first?
Any advice would help - especially if you’ve been through something similar.
Since you saw the full 930GB free when connecting the SATA drive directly, it sounds like the original controller board may have been encrypting the data (WD My Book drives often do this, even without user-set passwords). So when you removed it and connected the drive as a regular SATA HDD, your computer couldn’t read the encrypted file system — hence it looked empty.
Here’s what I’d recommend:
- Do not format or write anything to the drive.
- Avoid resoldering unless you’re very experienced — it’s risky and might worsen the damage.
- If the original controller board isn’t completely dead, reconnect the drive using that board. WD encryption is hardware-based, so the data might only be accessible through it.
- If the board is dead or the port is too damaged, you’ll need a donor board from the exact same model — ideally with the same firmware version. But note: many My Book boards have encryption chips tied to that specific board, so even a matched board might not work unless it includes the encryption chip and/or ROM chip.
- Once reconnected (through original or donor board), try accessing the drive. If it still shows empty, use free data recovery software to scan without writing anything.
- If this feels overwhelming or too risky, consult a professional data recovery service — especially if the data is irreplaceable.
Hope this helps — you absolutely still have a chance to get your files back.
