Need to data recovery from bamaged external HDD WD3200BMVU

Artem Makarov aka Robin
03.02.2011
14560 views

The manufacturers of computer stuff, trying to take into account trends in demand in the market and don't forget about the cheapening of production has recently started releasing portable hard drives where the USB interface is made not as a regular box - in the form of adapter SATA (ATA) - USB and mounts directly to the electronics board of hard drive . Pricing is typically a bit higher , to unsolder the so-called bridge - a chip that is responsible for handling broadcast via USB to the CPU, as a rule, there are technological conclusions that can connect a standard SATA connection and in some cases, the findings of the diagnostic terminal.

The possibility of standard SATA connection to the drive is reserved for factory purposes, because USB-SATA Bridge does not pass all or part of the process teams, and this possibility needs to be in the final stages of the conveyor assembly, when the drives are factory self-test cycle. In some cases, this feature helps in the delicate matter of data recovery from a USB hard drive.

Logical board of External HDD WD with built-in USB

Logical board of External HDD WD with built-in USB

But today I want to talk about the situation when the hard drive with integrated USB connector is not working due to failure of so-called controller (in fact, an electronics board) and on methods of providing access to the workspace in such cases as an example of the real order.

The recovery broken HDD Western Digital WD3200BMVU-11A04S0 family Venus. When connected to a USB cable no signs of life. Often the culprit faults of such discs is the ill-fated bridge, one based on the microcontroller Initio INIC-1608L (if I correctly spotted markings). To find such a miracle in the sale is not easy, if you're lucky, you can borrow a chip from a USB box manufacturing firm Western Digital, there is an adapter on the same bridge is usually built. But in this case the culprit was not.

Broken external HDD WD3200BMVU

Broken external HDD WD3200BMVU

In fact, when the drive is broken electronics board and need to recover information from it, come easy - change the fee for a similar good repair and reprogram ROM on the original (in some cases quite compatible). But in this particular case I was not possible. Discs are extremely rare guests on the operating table Engineer Data Recovery due to their low prevalence and need to pay in my database of donors are simply not there.

To save time, it was decided not to pursue restoration of the original electronics board, an opportunity is also open to question, and go another way.

The fact that the boards on the drives with USB connectors, at least for WD accurately distinguished from their comrades with SATA interface, only part of the roadway. In other matters the same circuitry is identical. Thus, if you drive HDD WD USB controller from the burnt and can not find a similar board for a replacement, you can just put the electronics board with another family, for example from a family of McKinley.

Платы винчестеров WD семейст Venus и McKinley

Boards HDD WD family of Venus and McKinley

Further, the question arises of compatible ROM. In the disk of the lineup ROM is integrated into the CPU and the easiest way to resoled the processor board to pay the donor patient. You can certainly write the ROM from the right family and to collect performance information from the modules up, but my opinion is that change is much faster process.

After engraftment SATA card the dive started working and I was able to copy customer data.

Write a comment
swa
03 february 2011, 10:47

I have the same broken drive but no idea how to fix

Artem Makarov aka Robin
04 february 2011, 17:14

For answer of your question need to make diagnostic. Because the same storages can had different troubles.

danny
30 may 2013, 11:55

so if i get this right you used a sata hdd pcb board to recover data from the usb only pcb board... did u have to swap the rom chips?

Artem Makarov aka Robin
30 may 2013, 13:54

Without original ROM get data access will be difficult