Re: Asmedia As2105 Driver Download
Gema Shisila
I have this small Sata HDD and I bought an enclosure for it, the asmedia as2105 usb device. Now, my computer does detect the enclosure, but not the disk in it. I've tried other disks too, but no joy. At the moment, I've no other means of testing these disks in other ways like a desktop.
So, what's really annoying is that apparently the computer sees the drive in Device Manager, Disk Management and via DISKPART, but not via Windows Explorer. To be precise: the computer does see the enclosure, but not the HDD.
I've seen similar behaviour from a drive that simply did not get the power it needed: Despite my USB port being advertised as USB 3.0, it turned out that it was incapable of actually supplying the 900mA that the standard dictates.
Of course, it goes without saying, that if you take out a hard drive from its enclosure, you automatically lose any warranty on the unit. The serial numbers are coded specifically, and if the unit is returned with evidence of tampering, the warranty will be void. As a result, you really do have to make a decision to forego your warranty before even considering attempting this.
The enclosure design is pretty simple, with a central frame and a C-shaped wrap-around frame which has rails which interlock with the central frame. The interlocking notches are not evenly spaced, and from some experimentation, it seems easiest to start in the corner of the curved section on the bottom first.
You will find undoing the rails on the top of the case requires more lateral movement, but soon enough, it will give way and the C shaped cover will just slide off without any broken clips, although possibly with screwdriver marks on the casing such as with my first attempt above.
To take the assembly apart, you should ease the drive out of the frame by pushing it up, and then pulling it horizontally away from the rear. Then, you can pull out the light-pipe from the underside mounting hole, and undo the bridge-board securing screw with a Philips screwdriver. The board disconnects by sliding upwards.
A closer look at the board reveals the use of a customized Asmedia controller, labelled ASM1051W, likely related to the plain ASM1051. A Winbond SPI flash containing the firmware can also be seen. The top segment appears to house the power conversion circuitry to provide the 5v rail to the drive.
The grommets themselves slide off the studs which are screwed into the four corner mounting holes of the drive. The screws are done up with a decent amount of torque, so a quality Torx T10 screwdriver is recommended to undo them.
After this, you will have your desired drive, ready for internal usage inside a computer or storage unit, although due to the sector size difference, re-partitioning and reformatting will be necessary.
BTW, if this chip fails, as it sometimes does, you can remove it and bypass it with two jumper wires. On this particular PCB I believe this can be done by installing links at R51 and R52. You would need to confirm this by testing for continuity with the SATA power connector and the respective +12V and +5V sources.
Sebastian, thanks a lot for all this work. For me, the power management is important, thus your observations confirm that disassembled WD My Books are just to be recycled. Unless of course a future firmware update would fix it.
Considering that xHCI is much more capable, complicated, silicon than EHCI, and considering that wrinkles are being ironed-out of host controller drivers still today; I suspect ASMedia chip might have become 0000:0000, and identity 04D9:2013 is taken from a keyboard.
I swore I had saw that VID/PID and yes, that does belong to my keyboard. Power cycling it again on the same hardware gives me VID 174C PID 51D6 REV 0001 which is ASMedia as expected. Must be a Windows goof along the way due to an older NEC Renesas chipset driver possibly being silly.
One more sanity check: is that 51d6 51D6, letter dee as in disc? Or did you maybe mis-read your screen, is it actually 5106? I feel a bit of doubt regarding five-one-dee-six, considering ASM1051 is five-one-zero-six, so ASM1051W might use same ID.
My Book Essentials models were encrypted (except in markets where encryption is illegal, eg Russia). Elements models are/were not. There is a key sector at the end of the user area which is hidden by the bridge. Tools such as reallymine can decrypt the bare drive, depending on the bridge.
So, if I remove the hard drive can I easily use the USB bridge chip with other WD hard drives, even if they have a different capacity than the original one? Say, I want to the the WD My Book 4TB chip with a 2 TB WD20EARS.
thank you very much indeed. I tried it with one WD2500AAKX which did spin up but could not be formatted. Also, in the WD drive management software (for Mac) the bridge would continue to report as 4TB My Book. Its the newest bridge btw.
A quality pair of flush-cut sidecutters is my favourite tool for that kind of work. If unavailable, a good pair of nail clippers might be sufficient. If you have no intention of ever re-connecting the pin with a dab of solder, you could just use a small jewellers thin flat-bladed screwdriver to snap it off.
Not sure if this is relevant but maybe you will be able to help me.
I currently have the older model of this HDD (WDBWLG0030HBKNE) and it has stopped working. After some trouble shooting and internet searches i have found the issue to be a faulty Bridge chip. however this model does not seem to be available in stores anymore, do you think it would be possible to use a bridge chip from this newer unit? If not is there another way to bypass this card to extract the data another way?
Excuse my ignorance but if i was to buy a my book 6tb unshell it then fit it in my pc or a different jbod enclosure, would i have any compatibility issues? i will obviously no longer use that asmedia controller.
How can I reuse the case with other disk??
I had removed the 3Tb HD from its case and I want reuse the USB 3.0 case with other disk but when I put other disk in this case, the computer don`t recognize it
In former early Greens, there was talk that TLER can be re-enabled using a tool called WDTLER. Unfortunately, as far as I know, these tools no longer work on current drives as the whole thing is now baked into firmware.
I purchased few days ago the 8TByte WD MyBook willing to use its USB 3.0 interface also with other SATA disks. I followed the instructions of this website and after having cut the pin 8 on the Winbond chip, the board ( ) continued to not recognize other disks. Than I looked at the scheme of the the chip and found that it looks similar to this one ( ). Measured the voltage on the just cut pin 8 of the chip and found that there are still 3.17 Volt. Probably it came from pin 7 as it was still connected to Vcc. Than I cut also the pin 7 and everything started to work correctly and the board was usable with plenty of other discs. I can not understand why WD does not wand that their board can be reused with other WD disks? However I noticed that after cutting of the 2 pins the chip becomes very hot with temperature rising to about 70 degrees Celsius.
Can someone please post a picture of the location of pins 7 & 8 of the Winbond chipset so that I can be sure I am cutting the correct ones? Has anyone else found that this makes the chipset run very hot?
A somewhat surprising discovery I have made with my WD Elements 4TB (looks a little bit different inside) is that when you remove it from the enclosure it reports more sectors than via USB, and thus the backup GPT seems corrupt.
I have a short on the input pin 2 of u5, I removed u5 but the short remains. Maybe one of those 5 caps there. But I cant find a spec for U5 its a MSC710110dm to see what is I out put is I assume 5v on pin 3, which is fed to the very small reg U3 which is feeding the 8 pin flash U2. I asume that will be 3.3v?
NOTE: Before modifying your interface make sure that the the board you have uses the AS Media chip. Looks like later WD USB3-to-SATA interfaces uses the JMicron JMS579 controller chip. Cutting the legs on the Winbond chip with the JMS579 chip does NOT allow the use of non-WD drives in these WD enclosures.
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