1.5TB Elements hard drive completely dead; no noise, blinking LED, not recognized

[therichisgood]

Hello, first time poster here...


Ok to make a long story short:
1.5TB Elements external drive decided to crash. The disk is not spinning (no sounds whatsoever) and the white LED now only blinks. It is no longer recognized by my laptop or in BIOS either.
The first thing I tried was to connect to a different computer but no change. I tried different outlets as well. Things were fine up to this point , there was no odd sound or anything indicating that the drive was going to die, it just didn't work when I went to plug it in. It wasn't dropped or miss handled in any way, nothing out of the ordinary, it's simply just dead.


I have been scouring forums for hours and hours and there seems to be some PCB or circuit board issues with these so I'm hoping that's all it is and my data isn't gone.  I contacted WD Support yesterday but they say it's out of warranty and there's pretty much nothing they can do for me.
I don't even care about the drive being replaced, I just need to get back what's on there.

Can anyone help me out where to go from here? I've seen a few videos on youtube of people swapping out the main board of a dead drive (because of a burned chip) and it working afterwards. Even if this is just a temporary, band-aid fix I'll take it as long as I can access my stuff. What's ironic is that I bought and used the drive as a back-up to keep my laptop freed up so I literally have EVERYTHING on there..
So is that it for the drive and my data or is there some hope?

I guess this wasn't so short after all but thanks for reading..

[therichisgood]

Forgot to add:

WDBAAU0015HBK-01

[Joe_S]

As long as it's a drive that did not come with Smartware you may be able to hook up as an internal or possibly in another enclosure. I don't know about those details. I'll Pm somebody who has more knowledge on this.

Joe

[therichisgood]

Thank you Joe_S, please let me know of any updates.

[ThePizzaMatrix]

Hi there, since the drive is not even on the BIOS then that's not a good sign... But I'm confused over this, did you look in your BIOS for the drive while on USB or did you take the drive off the case and put it inside your computer? Since the drive is out of warranty then you can try dismantling the drive and use it internally, if the problem is the external casing the the drive will work just fine as a secondary drive like that, or even on another external case like Joe_S said.

Now, if the problem is indeed the logic board, then you'll need the exact same one from the exact same batch to get it working; fzabkar in the internal drives section is the guy to go on that case, but try to confirm if the drive works internally first.

[therichisgood]

Sorry for the late reply, been busy with the holidays.

ThePizzaMatrix, the first thing I tried is to get it to work as-is. There was nothing happening, except for the blinking LED like mentioned in my first post. But since then I have contacted WD and confirmed that I was indeed not eligible for any warranty work, fair enough, so then I  bought a SATA to USB adapter to bypass the small power board and directly connect.. but the results are same as before. This is the stage I am at right now..

My next thing to try would be to open it up like you said and try to use it internally but as far as I know, laptop hard drives are smaller and this won't work. I did however find what looks like a burned chip on the smaller power board (I will take a picture to post up later) so I'm hoping that this is the case with the main board as well and that my data is in fact fine.. long shot but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[therichisgood]

Here are the pictures I was referring to.. turns out it's not a burned chip afterall but something does look funny about these contacts, no?






The main board is held on with torx screw and the chips are facing downward so I'm going to be inspecting that as soon as I get my hands on a torx driver.

[ThePizzaMatrix]

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therichisgood wrote:

My next thing to try would be to open it up like you said and try to use it internally but as far as I know, laptop hard drives are smaller and this won't work.      

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They are indeed smaller, but they use the exact same connectors as regular 3.5" drives, it just that unless your desktop case has a 2.5" bay (Like the floppy drive) then the drive will be loose, but you CAN connect it and use it on a desktop.

[therichisgood]

Thanks for the suggestion again Pizza but unfortunately, still nothing.

[ComputerFreak]

Your data are probably still on it. The only option is recovery by a recovery company.

It will cost you a fortune. WD offered me to recover for $3000

WD Elements is unreliable. Don't buy it.