Hi. I wasn’t paying attention and plugged the wrong cord into my WD 8TB drive. Almost instantly smoke started coming out and I quickly unplugged it. After plugging in the correct cord I got nothing. Quite as can be. So of course I took it apart and discovered a small burnt section on the smaller triangular circuit board. I have included pictures. I guess my question, is my data on the drive still good and is this fixable by me at home? Anybody’s help would be appreciated. I have almost all 8TB’s of this drive filled with some important stuff.
That’s the USB Controller Board …
if that’s the only thing that got Fried then you are lucky.
If the Hard Drive Logic Board didn’t get fried then you can use the drive with any 3rd Party 3.5" Powered USB Enclosure (as long as it supports 8TB drives) and then retrieve you data.
or if you have a Desktop PC you can plug it directly via the Standard SATA Connector + Power.
and maybe a replacement USB Controller board will work ?
I’ve got a few spares a friend gave to me after shucking his 4TB WD Elements drives and they work on every SATA hard drive i’ve plugged them into and every brand eg. Seagate, Hitachi, Samsung, Western Digital etc. Unfortunately, haven’t tested them with anything greater than 4TB since i don’t own a HDD that large.
Thanks for the response. Unfortunately I use an iMac so that’s not going to work for me. Where would I go to find a Powered USB Enclosure or a replacement board? I have never messed around with the inner workings of hard drives so I apologize if I sound like a rookie. Can’t help it. If I can recover the data from my drive I’ll be more than happy I asked a few dumb questions.
Everywhere
Retail Electronics Stores, Computer Stores, Ebay, Amazon etc etc… Google it.
Just make sure whatever you buy, the Specs/Features list that it supports 3.5" Drives with up to 8TB capacity.
(older enclosures may only support 2TB or 4TB)
from there, it’s just plug and play.
If it still does not work, then all i can advise is Data Recovery Services, which is very expensive. Best practice is to always keep a backup of your Important Data in case of drive failure or accidents.
