MY BOOK 1.5 TB Essential not recognized

Hi there I have a My Book 1.5 TB external drive that recently stop being recognized by “My computer”. I read up on line that by replacing the PCB board i would be able to recover data. So I purchased on Ebay a used PCB board(4061-705089-001 REV AG) and installed it the HDD. Once I connected it started to boot up and installed on the computer. But, I still do not see it on my computer. Although, i do see under disk managment but it says that it is not formatted. Do I format? Or what should I do? Thanks in advance

Hi user1711, welcome to the WD Community. Sorry to hear you cannot access your files. In most cases it is not recommended to try repairing the drives yourself since this can damage your information further. Before trying anything else I recommend you to contact support directly for assistance. 

http://support.wdc.com/country/index.asp

There are also some Community users with knowledge on how to repair drives, but again this is not recommended. 

http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-PC/connected-wrong-power-supply-to-3TB-WD-My-Book-Essential-any-way/m-p/841138#M22725

@user1711, I suggest you visit The HDD Oracle forum.

http://www.hddoracle.com (new)
http://malthus.mooo.com (old)

Your original problem description is a little vague. Does your drive spin up with the original bridge board?

If you connect the old PCB on its own, can you see it with UVCView or USBDeview?

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/b/a/eba1050f-a31d-436b-9281- 92cdfeae4b45/UVCView.x64.exe
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_IDs/UVCView.x86.exe

Was the replacement USB bridge board from a 3TB Essentials? If so, then it may have the wrong sector size (4KB instead of 512 bytes). That would explain why Windows is asking you to format it (don’t do it).

Can you show us what sector 0 looks like? You could use a disc editor such as DMDE (freeware).

http://dmde.com/

Could you show us DMDE’s Partitions window?

Thank you for your repsonse-- Since the last post I am able to open up my drive with WD Smartware. I was able to extract some files such as pics, pdf files but im having a difficult time retreiving my video files. When I copy and paste onto my computer it takes forever and then after about ten minutes the drive is not recognized anymore. So i have to reboot the computer in order to access drive again, Is there something that I can do to retreive videos? Thanks

It appears that your drive may be afflicted with WD’s “slow issue”. If you examine the drive’s SMART report with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo or HD Sentinel, you will probably find reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

I would clone your drive, sector by sector, using a tool such as ddrescue, and then use data recovery software on the clone, if necessary.

However, to prepare your drive for cloning, you should apply the “slow fix” in the following threads:

http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29187&start=20

http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.php?t=998&p=4345#p4345

WDMarvel provides a single-click solution for this problem. It costs US$10 for a one-month licence.

Otherwise contact forum member “beLIEve” ( http://community.wd.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/190214)..)