Please help: how to recover data after heads crash if encryption is full time active?

[wiciul]

Hi,

My Passport Essential 500 GB (USB2.0) has been damaged as a result of falling from 0.5 meters (drive was not connected then). Probably heads’ system is crashed.

I haven’t set password lock but I assume that drive data encryption is full time active even without setting password as Mabkay has written in another thread.

Will it be possible to retrieve data by replacing drive electronics board and heads if there is default hardcoded password to encrypt and decrypt data?

My additional question is: where is the parking place for heads in that drive? Whether is it outside the disc platter?

I would appreciate for all your help and advices!

Kind regards,

Witek Rossa

[Mabkay]

Since your drive electronics (PCB) should be intact, you’ll not face drive data encryption issue here.

Yes, you could retrieve your data by replacing the head assembly from a donor to the host. And this is subject to platter damage during the impact. (FYI - these platters are made out of toughen glass - but possible to scratch the magentic medium)

You drive should have zero contact head parking ramp outside the disc platter(s). Almost all the drive manufactures now employs this technique.

Only reputed Data Recovery guys should be able help you on this. Further, there are WD approved professionals listed on WD support site if you happened to live in US/Canada or EU. Your drive warranty will not void if you contact them. Besides, they should charge you, if they were able to recover your data.

[wiciul]

So question is: would it be difficult for reputed Data Recovery guys to replace head assembly from donor to the host in case of that particular model? Isn’t is so that mechanical components are pre-tuned in factory for each copy and whole assembly may not be identical?

Thanks in advance for your answer. You provided really valuable information for me last time.

Kind regards,

Witek Rossa

[Mabkay]

Since your drive is relatively new, I don’t think there will be any difficulty of getting an identical head assembly. Pre amplifier stage may be inbuilt to head assembly but it has nothing to do with data encryption. Only platters and encryption chip on the PCB cannot be interchanged from a donor.

[wiciul]

I have read this article: http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/western_digital/My+Passport+Essential and I have one concern.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
“If this is the case you can try to swap PCB from another WD drive of the same model but your chances of success are close to zero, especially on newer hard drives. The problem is that logic board on modern hard drive is adapted to the head disk assembly it was manufactured with.” Does it mean that swapping head assemble with the one from a donor might nevertheless be a huge challenge?
Would it be a solution then to exchange whole PCB with adapted head disk assembly and then restore encryption chip from the original PCB? Would it be possible at all?

Again, I would be very grateful for your reply.

Kind regards,

Witek Rossa

[Mabkay]

Be careful of bogus Data Recovery professionals as they may show illustrious info on their websites. If you don’t want to void your warranty, I recommend you to contact DR agents from WD support site as I informed you earlier.

I don’t see any requirement of swapping encryption chip from donor to host and will be futile if donor’s PCB is from slightly different batch. Manufactures do change drive PCBs very often and even in monthly basis. But the design of head assembly won’t change in that frequency.

My best guess is to contact authorized DR agent closer to you and handover your burden to more capable hands. Head assembly cannot be swapped without any special tools and needs expensive testing equipments. And most importantly, data recovery will cost you $1000.00-2000.00, depending on difficulty and amount of data being recovered.

Good Luck…

[Bill_S]

If they can recover the data.  Head crashes damage the media, so it’s possible to really lose some data.  However, if they can’t recover the data, our data recovery partners won’t charge you anything.  Also, if you didn’t set your password, there shouldn’t be a problem for them with the encryption.  Unfortunately, and I’m sorry to say this, but this is a hard lesson for making sure you have multiple backups on different drives, or media. 

[edit]

This was a lesson I had to learn the hard way, myself.