Inside almost every external is an ordinary drive and a small bridge board — and the bridge fails at least as often as the disk. That is why so many undetected externals turn out to hold a perfectly healthy drive, and why removing that drive from its case is the one thing most likely to make matters worse.
$ bdr diagnose /dev/sdb → Device: WD My Passport · 2 TB USB → Status: NOT DETECTED — USB board failed → Client: confidential · Oxford, Oxfordshire $ bdr engineer-working → USB board: repaired · drive healthy → Encryption: key preserved · unlocked → Imaging: 1.9 TB / 2 TB · 1sectors mapped $ bdr verify → ✓ photos — 24,800 files → ✓ documents — 11,200 files → ✓ drive recovered — data back
On most modern WD My Passport and My Book units the encryption key lives on the USB bridge board, so a bare disk removed from its case reads as unformatted even when perfectly healthy — and letting Windows initialise it at that point causes real damage to a drive that was fine.
That is the single most useful thing to know about external drives, and it is why so many arrive here recoverable.
Worth doing before assuming anything, because they cost nothing and eliminate the commonest causes.
Try a different cable first — USB cables fail internally with no visible damage, and the one supplied with the drive is often the weakest link in the chain. Then a different port, ideally directly on the machine rather than through a hub, since a bus-powered 2.5-inch drive can simply fail to spin on an underpowered hub. On a desktop unit with a power brick, substitute the brick if you can. Then try another computer entirely, which separates a drive fault from a machine fault in about a minute.
Then listen. A drive that spins quietly and never appears points at the bridge, and the disk behind it is probably fine. Clicking, ticking or grinding points at the mechanism — unplug it and stop there.
The disk inside is usually a standard drive; the box around it is what varies.
Including the bridge-encrypted models, where the original enclosure must come with the drive.
Portable and desktop units, including the ones with integrated encryption.
Single drives and multi-bay RAID enclosures, including proprietary controller layouts.
Including legacy Iomega units where the brand and its support are long gone.
Where two or more disks form an array inside the case — priced as array work rather than single-drive.
One price for a single external, whatever failed inside it.
A single external drive is from £300 +VAT after a free 48-hour diagnostic and a written quote. Multi-bay and RAID enclosures start from £500 +VAT. Most jobs are no fix, no fee; clean-air and donor-part work carries a 50% deposit with the balance payable only on success.
Send the unit complete — enclosure, and the original cable and power supply if you still have them. Full write-ups: LaCie Rugged Recovery: I/O Device Error, a My Book Duo mirror that wouldn’t open and why a My Passport is useless on its own.
Send the whole unit in for its free diagnostic with a brief note on what happened; an engineer evaluates it and confirms the exact quote in writing before any work starts.
Getting your data back starts with getting the whole unit to us — enclosure included. Pack it safely, enclose your contact details, and once we've run the free diagnostic we confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Posting it? A tracked, insured service is what we’d recommend. Rather drop it in? You’re welcome Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just package the device up as above first.
Need a scoped quote first? Describe the drive and fault on the form and an engineer will assess it and reply with a tailored quote.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 01865 593000.
The technical questions we get most about failed external drives.
Often not. On externals the USB bridge board fails at least as often as the disk, and a drive that spins quietly but never appears usually points at the bridge with a healthy disk behind it. Try a different cable and port first — it costs nothing.
No, especially with WD. On most modern My Passport and My Book units the encryption key sits on the bridge board, so a bare disk reads as unformatted even when healthy — and initialising it then does real damage. Send the unit complete.
Unplug it and leave it off. Clicking means the heads are failing or contacting the platter, and every further power-on spreads the damage. No cable change or software will help.
No. That prompt means the partition or file system cannot be read, not that the data has gone. Formatting writes a new structure over the one a recovery would use.
Yes. Those hold two or more disks in an array, so each member is imaged and the layout derived from the images rather than the controller. They are priced as array work, from £500 plus VAT.
From £300 plus VAT for a single external, and from £500 plus VAT for multi-bay and RAID enclosures — fixed in a written quote after a free 48-hour diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, a flat £300 + VAT per drive, no fix no fee on most jobs, and external hard drives of every make recovered, portable or desktop, enclosure and all. Start your recovery today.