sagar.sdm
Discoverer
Recently a friend who owns a WD Passport USB 3.0 1TB drive fell victim to the 'bad PCB USB device' error on the drive and is not being able to access any of the data on it. This happened out of the blue, the HDD was not dropped or anything. The HDD simply does not get recognized by any PC, tried so far with Win XP and 7, yet to try on Linux.
When it is plugged in on my desktop, Win 7 installs it and says: 'The software for this device has been successfully installed.' And when I click on this message box, 2 messages are in there: 'USB Mass storage device Ready to use' and 'WD BAD PCB USB Device Ready to use'. But, the drive does not get recognized.
Some search on the Internet shows that there is fair number of owners facing this issue on their WO Passport drives and there isn't a way to recover data from the drive which has this issue. From what I read, it seems the absence of a solution is more to do with the encryption mechanism followed in this drive, and to the fact that the PCB is hard soldered to the drive itself (no SATA port inside). However, I'm still trying to figure out if there any darn way to recover the data.
Has anyone faced this issue earlier? If yes, could they find a way to recover the data?
The drive must be in warranty, and it can probabaly be replaced by RMA. But the primary concern is the data recovery before doing so.
Any pointers that would help are welcome. TIA.
When it is plugged in on my desktop, Win 7 installs it and says: 'The software for this device has been successfully installed.' And when I click on this message box, 2 messages are in there: 'USB Mass storage device Ready to use' and 'WD BAD PCB USB Device Ready to use'. But, the drive does not get recognized.
Some search on the Internet shows that there is fair number of owners facing this issue on their WO Passport drives and there isn't a way to recover data from the drive which has this issue. From what I read, it seems the absence of a solution is more to do with the encryption mechanism followed in this drive, and to the fact that the PCB is hard soldered to the drive itself (no SATA port inside). However, I'm still trying to figure out if there any darn way to recover the data.
Has anyone faced this issue earlier? If yes, could they find a way to recover the data?
The drive must be in warranty, and it can probabaly be replaced by RMA. But the primary concern is the data recovery before doing so.
Any pointers that would help are welcome. TIA.
