USB PCB Question

[Philip Shaw]

Good evening. I received a WD Passport 1TB drive today and it has the USB connection soldered on as part of the PCB. There are no SATA connections. I have a couple of questions. First, can I just get the same PCB that is SATA and stick it on after changing the chip? If so, how do I get the correct part number? The number on the PCB is 2060-701675-004. I have tried variations of that with no success. Second, I have seen on hddguru that there is automatic encryption on this drive. Does this mean I have to have the functioning PCB that came with the drive or I will never have a chance at data recovery due to encryption? I want to stick this on my PC3K and see what is going on but it looks like I have to jump through hoops to get to that point.

Thank you,

Philip Shaw

[sup...@rambuscomputers.co.uk]

Hi,

Firstly if you swap the usb for a sata compatible one it will not decrypt as the encryption chip ie symwave, initio or jm chip is on the usb pcb. All encryption & decryption is done on the fly. The only reason to do this is to be able to clone the encrypted drive ie with bad sectors to a good wd drive using a ddi or similar. 

You can connect your wd usb pcb to your pc300 udma using the toshiba connector & com port. There is a shift when connecting the toshiba connector to the pcb pins. Then you can check & backup sa modules. 

You can replace the usb pcb with a usb donor & swap the rom U12 & maybe the U14 over if you have a board issue.

You do have to be careful as if the encryption/decryption key changes for some reason the you wont be able to read the data

Loki

Sent from my iPhone 4S

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[IT LAND]

Hi Philip,

from my experience with these drives the fastest way would be to leap into that and convert it to SATA with soldering.

It is not that bad as it looks, practice and few drives and you'll succeed, make sure the wires couples are twisted 71-72, 73-74/75.

Then you'll be able to image it with DDI or DC or any other imager.

Since its encrypted probably using Initio, the next stage is to find a 3.5" My passport Bridge with the same or close version of Initio, you connect that to the imaged drive and you'll be able to extract data in most cases if the encryption key wasn't located on the bad sectored area.

Cheers,

Oded