The major difference between how Western Digital products perform compared to the other brands is that on most of the newer My Passport and My Book models, WD stores the encryption key on the bridge board, rather than the disk. Therefore, once you have physically removed the disk from the board that contains the encryption key, you cannot read the disk.
As a standard procedure, WD includes hardware-based encryption within the USB bridge and this is enabled by default with no password provided. Therefore, you would typically never know about it, until you were able to successfully disconnect the physical disk from the board that houses its encryption key.
A My Passport has inside of it just a standard 2.5" hard drive and a little USB bridge chip which does all the AES encryption (key generation and storage) automatically (even if you have no password set), but is always on (as part of its design). The bridge chip is normally “invisible”. It becomes relevant as soon as there is some kind of failure, since the disk and bridge are now essentially a single unit (a working disk in a non-working bridge can’t be read, nor can that same disk in any different docking station or external casing).
Therefore, an external WD drive must be shipped complete; there is the possibility of either repairing a broken bridge or recovering the key material from the bridge only if the original board reaches us along with the disk.
Silent, no light (LED) or nothing detected: most likely the bridge or the power circuitry of the bridge are bad, but the disk itself is still good behind the failed part. Detected but prompts you to format or shows as RAW: usually indicates that the bridge is going out partially or the file system was damaged and once again the disk is typically fine. Clicking, ticking or spinning up/down: that’s the mechanism. The proper course of action is to unplug it and stop it.
A simple and cost-free method to identify a possible problem is to swap out the cable you’re using with another one and try it again. This will eliminate the most common minor problems within a minute. If you find that the behaviour is exactly the same when using a different cable on a different port then your problem is inside the unit.
To recover a faulty internal Western Digital (WD) drive, recovery methods are similar to those used for other drives. When the PCB fails, it can be repaired or replaced with the original ROM. Adaptive migration occurs for boards that fail, while for heads that have failed, replacement parts are obtained from a matching donor. For firmware errors, we address them through the service area until the drive successfully enumerates to its true capacity. Red drives are generally network-attached storage (NAS) drives which usually come to us as part of an array, rather than individually. Purple drives are typically surveillance drives that originated from digital video recorder (DVR) and network video recorder (NVR) systems. We need to carve their proprietary file system as opposed to mounting the file system when recovering data.
If you are looking to recover an individual Western Digital (WD) hard drive internally or externally, then this will be priced from £300 +VAT. However, if the WD hard drive is part of a network attached storage (NAS) or redundant array of independent disks (RAID), the price will start from £500 +VAT. Each project commences with a no obligation free 48-hour diagnostic and each project comes with a written quotation. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data; donor work requires a 50% deposit upfront with the remaining balance being payable only on success. Please send us any external units with the original housing / enclosure and the original cable if you still have it.
The reason is that the encryption key is stored in the USB bridge chip and not in the disk itself. By default, all of WD’s latest model portable (My Passport) and desktop (My Book) drives use hardware encryption. Therefore, when you remove a drive from its enclosure, the drive appears to be “unformatted” but the data is perfect. Send them with their enclosures attached.
Not usually. More often an undetected WD external is a failed bridge board than a failed disk. Try a different cable and try it in a different port first. If this does not work the problem lies within the unit and the disk is likely fine.
No. In addition to the encryption issue, the bare disk may prompt for initialisation when connecting it to Windows and initialising it means writing to that drive, which can cause issues. Do not connect the drive without the enclosure. Have the unit sent in for diagnosis.
Power it off and do not turn it back on again. Any additional turn-ons with the clicking of the heads will increase the damage. This is a parts replacement project; no amount of cabling changes or software upgrades will resolve the issue.
Internal or external WD drives from £300 + VAT and NAS/RAID sets from £500 + VAT. Fixed price written quote after 48 hours of free diagnostic. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data.