Caution on WD USB-only external HDD

[DavidF]

Heads up:
I had 2 external WD 2.5"drives from the same person last week for recovery after the drives would not be recognised when connected.
When separated from their chassis, the drives do not have sata connections, the HDD logic board only has USB.
In both cases the USB had been damaged.
After a little googling there is apparently a production run of 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs like this with no way externally to differentiate them from standard.
Maybe it was a temporary work-around after the floods in Thailand but that doesn't help the owner of the data.

 

[OzzyGeek]

Yes, unfortunately David it makes data recovery near impossible. WD have been doing this in some of there passport drives for a while know. You might want to contact a company I use for data recovery in Australia called PAYAM http://www.payam.com.au/

 

[DavidF]

I'll pass that on to the owner, thanks

 

[andcorptech]

We had one like this last year. The customer destroyed the mini usb connector on the external. We managed to desolder the damaged connector and resolder a USB cable on to recover the data. Doesnt help though if the USB controller is fried