Broken USB Port

[James_Michael23]

Please help!  I plugged my USB cable into the port of my Book external hard drive, and it started connecting and disconnecting on its own.  I unplugged it, and boom, I heard a piece bouncing around down inside the drive.  When I call WD support for help they cant even recover my files or ensure that the broken port is due to their shoddy craftsmanship.  Now I cant even get an email address to send pictures of the back of the drive so that I can have a new one shipped out to me.   For the money, this is truly a shameful product and company.  The experience has been terrible and I wouldn't recommend buying their drives or any of their products.  No matter what I do I will have to have someone repair the drive so that I can recover the data, which I will have to pay for from my own money, and then cross my fingers that I receive a replacement.  Whats the best route to get a solution to this problem?  Please help, thanks,

James Adcock

[oxter]

Hello James, sorry for all this troubles, I have escalated your case, please check your private messages for further information.

[pforbes7]

The same thing just happened to my 1TB WD   I have all sorts of things on this drive!!!

[Bamagirl]

I've had the same thing happen as well.  I'm not sure how / where to have it repaired. 

[Joe_S]

Well if it's a drive that comes with Smartware the board that the USB port attaches to provides hardware encryption. Even if you can get the drive recognized the data will be encrypted and useless. It doesn't matter if you used Smartware or a password or not. About the only thing to try is find an electronics repair person and see if they can sloder on a new port. The other is a gamble because the criruit boards are not really interchangable and frequently change. You can try purchasing an identical drive or search for a board on Ebay. Check the posts by fzabkar he explains about matching up numbers on the boards. You just learned not to trust one drive with inportant data no matter who makes it.

Joe

[criss_x]

My dear friend

Your problem is not difficult to be resolved!!!!

The same problem happened to me but fortunatelly my WD MyBook 1TB drive has triple interface (USB 2.0, E-SATA & Firewire) and I connected the drive by the Firewire port...

If your drive has only USB connection, just open the case (cabinette) and take the drive out as a simple SATA hard disk!!! Then connect your hard disk on one of the ports of your PC!!! Then your MyBook will stop to be EXTERNAL but you will not loose it permanently...

Ths hard disk will work absolutely nice and faster because the speed limitation of the USB 2.0 port (480 MBp/s)  will not exist anymore!!!

I wish I could help to rewsolve your problem....

[PalmettoAmb]

I'm just an end-user, what in the world are you talking about?  I can't even figure out how to take the thing apart.

[Bill_S]

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criss_x wrote:

My dear friend

Your problem is not difficult to be resolved!!!!

The same problem happened to me but fortunatelly my WD MyBook 1TB drive has triple interface (USB 2.0, E-SATA & Firewire) and I connected the drive by the Firewire port...

If your drive has only USB connection, just open the case (cabinette) and take the drive out as a simple SATA hard disk!!! Then connect your hard disk on one of the ports of your PC!!! Then your MyBook will stop to be EXTERNAL but you will not loose it permanently...

Ths hard disk will work absolutely nice and faster because the speed limitation of the USB 2.0 port (480 MBp/s)  will not exist anymore!!!

I wish I could help to rewsolve your problem....

---

That is not entirely true.  If you have a WD SmartWare drive, then you won't be able to access the data by taking the drive out of the case and connecting it inside your pc.  WD SmartWare drives are hardware encrypted.  That means that once the data is copied to your drive, it is always encrypted.  You need the case in order to access your data.

Also, once you open the case, you void your drive's warranty.

[PalmettoAmb]

I am 3 months out of the warranty.  So there is no hope of recovering anything on the drive then? 

[Joe_S]

Only if you can find somebody that can solder on a new USB port or professional data recovery.

Joe