As the title says, my WD Elements 4TB has stopped getting power.
At first I thought it could be the power supply, so I tried with another one, but to no avail.
I then tried with another USB cable, but still it didn’t power on.
I opened the case to connect the disk via SATA and access my data, so I removed the PCB, connected it via SATA and that’s when I found out that the disk is hardware encrypted and I cannot access my files.
The disk works, so the PCB is the culprit.
The disk is almost full with really important data so I would like to recover them.
I’m not an expert but I have a pretty good understanding of electronics, and what I got from reading the posts here I have two options.
I can try recovering my data with some software (I was looking at DMDE but I never had to use data recovering software so I don’t know where to start), or I can try to find the culprit on the PCB and ask some electronics shop to change the non-working component, hoping the broken one is a resistor or something like that and not the encrypting chip itself.
I have a multimeter I used to check for shorts but everything looks ok to me so, I’m in desperate need of an help.
If someone has a better understanding of those boards and could guide me, I’d really appreciate it, or even better if there’s a way to recover all my stuff with a data recovering software bypassing the board and the encryption.
Hey, sorry for the late response, been a couple of busy days.
First of all, thank you for your time.
Actually, I was thinking about PM you because I saw your name in a couple of posts of related issues and was hoping you could help me in some way.
I made a mistake looking for my HDD, it’s not Elements series, but Elements for Desktop, so I guess it is encrypted after all?
Here’s some photos of the PCB, hoping it can help, even if you have some suggestions on like testing with a multimeter some components that may be the issue.
Still, if there’s any way I can recover via software my data, I’d still be happy. The disk works outside the enclosure, so I could still format it and use it after recovering the data.
If you have a multimeter, power up the board on its own, without a USB cable. Then measure the voltages at L1/L6 (+5V regulator), and each of the Vcore (~1.2V) and Vio (+3.3V) regulators. Also measure the voltage at R56 (the zero-ohm resistor near the power socket, “000”). It should +12V on both sides. Use any screw hole as your ground.
So, I tested what you suggested to.
First of all, I actually have no idea what could be the cause because I don’t know much about reading the schematics, but the readings are correct even if a bit odd to me.
R56 (zero-ohm resistor) reads +12V on both sides, as it should;
L1/L6 reads +5V on the lower side (which is the nearest to the power socket) and ~2.6V on the upper side;
Both Vcore and Vio read 0V on both sides.
I used the ground plate on the angled side of the board to measure everything.
Attached you can find a photo with the readings indication.
Thanks for your patience
Just to give you some feedback, after testing the IC, it could really be the culprit.
Following the schematics you provided, I read 5V in and 0V out.
There’s continuity from GND pin and PGOOD pin to PCB ground.
I have no reading for FB pin and I also don’t know what it should read.
So, do you think that could be an easy fix?
I can try arrange in an electronics shop for a repair
Thanks again for your patience and knowledge!
Well, the IC seems pretty cheap, don’t know about labour cost, I’m gonna ask tomorrow and see how much they ask for it.
To replace the PCB I’d still need to order one, and ask them to transfer the flash, right?
Is there any other component that would need to be moved from the old to the new PCB?
So, just to check if I understood correctly: WD Elements for Desktop do have hardware encryption, but the key is on the HDD; so, as long as I buy the same board, with the same flash chip, it’ll still be able to decode data from it, because the actual key is on the HDD and the flash is merely there to do the encryption/decryption.
Just asking because it’s the first time I read this info and I’m trying to understand how all of this works as best as I can
I always thought that Elements models were not encrypted. That’s why I asked for a DMDE screenshot. Essentials models or regular My Books are encrypted.
WD’s earlier external enclosures are often configured with a 4KB sector size for compatibility with Windows XP and earlier. That’s another reason I asked for a DMDE screenshot.
When a drive is inside the enclosure, the USB-SATA bridge firmware reserves a portion of the user area at the end of the drive for its own purposes. Earlier models would hide a ~600MB virtual CD (Smartware VCD) in this area. All encrypted models store the encryption key in this same area. The bridge then identifies as a USB mass storage device with a slightly smaller capacity.
In short, if your drive is encrypted, then a straight swap with a compatible bridge PCB is all that is required. Alternatively, if you are OK with Linux, there are software decryption solutions.
Don’t select logical disks. Choose the physical disk.
When you see your exFAT volume, with BCF in the Indicators column, d-click it and expand the $Root. You should then see your file/folder tree. You can then r-click your files and Recover them to another drive. They are not encrypted.
The problem is as I suspected, namely that your enclosure is configured with a 4KB sector size. That’s why DMDE reports “4K”. The exFAT volume then appears to be 8x smaller (4TB / 8 = 500GB).
The free version of DMDE will recover up to 4000 files of any size from any one folder per click. The standard version (US$20) will recover everything in one go.
So, just a follow up.
In the end you were right, DMDE apparently manages to recover everything.
I’ll probably buy the standard version just because of the amout of folders and sub-folders I have in the HDD, but from what I tested with a small amount of files, everything looks as it should be.
Pity that it has to be that hard to get my files back just because WD wanted to.
I mean, that 4KB sector size is just an effort to make it hard for everyone to get back data and spend some money on data recovery services, which are way too expensive.
That said, thank you so much @fzabkar for the time and knowledge you passed by on an amateur like me.
You really saved me (and most importantly my data!), and I can’t thank you enough.
I’ll probably just buy another disk to recover everything safely and then use this disk apart from the enclosure as an internal HDD as backup.
The reason for the 4KB sector size is so that legacy operating systems can access drives larger than 2TiB. That’s the limit for an MBR partition when the sector size is 512 bytes. Increasing the sector size by 8 allows Windows XP to access 16TiB drives. During earlier times, WD made available a “quick formatter” tool that could be used to reconfigure the bridge firmware for the desired sector size. I don’t know whether this tool is still part of WD’s “customer experience ecosystem”. (I always laugh when I see that.)