Question Water-Damaged WD MyBook Studio Edition II Quad Interface 6TB

[SennaSempre]

Hello, this is my 1st post and the reason why I joined. I have a water-damaged hard drive 6TB that had water on-or-in it for 1 day and then I dried it out. I see no water corrosion damage anywhere on the drive itself or the internal control board in the chassis or housing.

This hard drive would not power up when plugged into a 15" MacBook Pro but it did when plug into a 27" iMac using the same stock AC adapter. The power status with the 27" iMac has the front light blinking but no spinning of the platters.

I read that it could be a problem with the control board in the housing unit and to use a SATA-USB connector straight into the computer which I've done to no avail. I've tried this 3.3V pin tape-hack explained in Step 14 here -

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Shuck+a+WD+Elements+External+Hard+Drive/137646

...and still nothing on both drives. I don't know what else I can do which is why I'm asking you. Some extra links to the exact model I have with the online manual and attached photos. Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you.

Online Manual - https://www.manua.ls/western-digital/my-book-studio-ii/manual

Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II review: Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II

Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II

www.cnet.com

https://www.anandtech.com/show/4759/western-digital-my-book-studio-edition-ii-6tb-review

https://www.storagereview.com/review/6tb-western-digital-my-book-studio-edition-ii-review-wdh2q60000

 

[helpstar]

clean the pcbs with isopropyl alcohol
eventually dry it in the oven by about 60°C for 24hours

connect the hdd inside a pc by sata directly

 

[SennaSempre]

clean the pcbs with isopropyl alcohol
eventually dry it in the oven by about 60°C for 24hours

connect the hdd inside a pc by sata directly

I have tried the SATA-USB cable direct route and it didn't work. the drive itself is dried out, there isn't any moisture or water on the drive, and I hope not inside it, but I would be too scared to bake it at a high temp for a long time, can anything else be done?

 

[USAFRet]

I have tried the SATA-USB cable direct route and it didn't work. the drive itself is dried out, there isn't any moisture or water on the drive, and I hope not inside it, but I would be too scared to bake it at a high temp for a long time, can anything else be done?

Was it powered on when it got wet?

If so, something likely shorted out.

(this is why we have backups)

 

[helpstar]

try direct sata, not with an usb adapter
sata power and sata data connection

 

[SennaSempre]

to USAFRet - these WD MyBooks are strange whereby the drive is plugged into a power source via AC adapter but does not power on unless you plug it into the PC so I had it in that configuration I believe?... but now thinking about it, I'm not sure because this was more than a month ago.

to helpstar - what do you mean by direct sata power and sata data connection? is that a different cable or external bay configuration?

 

[USAFRet]

to USAFRet - these WD MyBooks are strange whereby the drive is plugged into a power source via AC adapter but does not power on unless you plug it into the PC so I had it in that configuration I believe?... but now thinking about it, I'm not sure because this was more than a month ago.

Plugged in to the wall = power.
Connected to the PC = spinning.

Seeing as the only thing between Working and Not Working was the water....this does not bode well.

 

[SennaSempre]

Upon closer inspection I see that one of these PCB's has a darker discoloration on some of the metal mounting points on the PCB. I took side-by-side pics of them here.

So I'm guessing that one of these boards had the water affect it more than the other and maybe has shorted out causing this darker burn-looking discoloration, I don't know, just speculating.

But since this is RAID 0 then I would have to replace this 1 board and reinstall it back into the original chassis and hope it starts up because I won't be able to get the to spin individually because of the RAID 0 configuration.

But I may need to replace the BIOS chip if the firmware is different. I don't know if it is just a clamp or if that chip is soldered because then I would have to bring the old and new PCB to a shop just to do that. Am I correct in any of this perhaps?

 

[USAFRet]

RAID 0?
All that data is gone, unless you have it backed up elsewhere.

Personally, I'd abandon that whole thing.
Resurrect the one drive that still works, and move on.

 

[DSzymborski]

Yeah, you basically only use RAID 0 with data you don't care if you lose, either because it's unimportant or because it's well backed up. Well, if you do RAID at all, which, of course, almost everyone shouldn't.

 

[fzabkar]

Is this what you are trying to use?

https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005006008840921.html

https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/Sc1bdc00...rt-for-Windows-Series-External-Hard-Drive.jpg (photo)

 

[SennaSempre]

well I can't abandon the effort, I need the data so I have to try anything I can. the RAID 0 was set up that way by default I think because it said 6 TB for disk info when they are 2X 3TB drives. yeah, I using that SATA-USB cable, but its probably not transmitting any real power to spin them up, I think I should wash the PCB with 90% isopropyl alcohol, I'm reading this has worked for some people.

 

[fzabkar]

Once you've worked out how to plug in your HDDs and switch them on, let us know what you see in the Partitions tab of DMDE.

https://dmde.com/

 

[SennaSempre]

Why am I not able to upload a photo of the drives from my computer as an attachment or inline in the content body? Do I need approval from an admin to upload photo media?

 

[fzabkar]

You need to use an external hosting service. Most people use Imgur.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

One reason raid 0 for the most part is stupid. One drive dies and you’re done. Have these at work. Your best bet is quit messing with it and take it a data recovery center and hope and pray that drive is salvageable. Had a similar situation on one at work and we had to do data recovery on it, ended up being 3.000-4,000 dollars. Always always always do not use raid 0 and DO backups. Even if you get an 8 tb external or so and run an incremental backup to get your data on that periodically that at least will be a start.

 

[fzabkar]

One reason raid 0 for the most part is stupid. One drive dies and you’re done. Have these at work. Your best bet is quit messing with it and take it a data recovery center and hope and pray that drive is salvageable. Had a similar situation on one at work and we had to do data recovery on it, ended up being 3.000-4,000 dollars.

You should not have needed to pay more than $1K per drive, unless there was a head crash.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Not a lot of head crashing I don’t think but those WD red drives from what the guy said are helium filled, so special equipment needed. Basically they had to dissemble the failed drive and rebuild it into a new drive. If I recall though with it being a helium filled drive, I think when they reassemble the helium leaks out slowly once they fill it. So they may have had to do that a couple of times plus the amount of time it was on the equipment. I think we also had paid a little extra to get it back quicker due to a time restraint.

 

[SennaSempre]

One reason raid 0 for the most part is stupid. One drive dies and you’re done. Have these at work. Your best bet is quit messing with it and take it a data recovery center and hope and pray that drive is salvageable. Had a similar situation on one at work and we had to do data recovery on it, ended up being 3.000-4,000 dollars. Always always always do not use raid 0 and DO backups. Even if you get an 8 tb external or so and run an incremental backup to get your data on that periodically that at least will be a start.

I didn't even know what RAID 0 was until this happened to me and it was explained as such. I just bought the drive and it came like that by default. If I had known that RAID 0 was such a stupid concept then I would reformatted the drive before using it. But nothing I can do about it now.

 

[fzabkar]

Not a lot of head crashing I don’t think but those WD red drives from what the guy said are helium filled, so special equipment needed. Basically they had to dissemble the failed drive and rebuild it into a new drive. If I recall though with it being a helium filled drive, I think when they reassemble the helium leaks out slowly once they fill it. So they may have had to do that a couple of times plus the amount of time it was on the equipment. I think we also had paid a little extra to get it back quicker due to a time restraint.

You said that you "had a similar situation on one at work". If by "similar" you mean that your helium drives were exposed to water, then no disassembly would have been required (because they are sealed units).

BTW, I had to smile at Ontrack's blog:

https://www.ontrack.com/en-us/blog/top-five-extraordinary-data-recoveries-from-2019

"Two weeks later the customer found the four removed drives hidden in the office, however, they’d been placed into a bucket and soaked in bleach for the two weeks they were missing. The damaged drives were heavily corroded, however, Ontrack’s cleanroom engineers were able to clean up the electronics and return the drives to a state where they could be imaged."

Sounds impressive until ...

"The below image shows one of the 12TB helium drives before and after cleaning from Ontrack cleanroom engineers."

So they cleaned the PCB. The HDA didn't need any work because it was sealed. Moreover, they didn't need a cleanroom for this. A kitchen table would have sufficed. The most that a user would need to do in such cases is order a PCB plus firmware transfer for about US$50 per board.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

To the op, raid 0 was officially meant for better performance but doesn’t really make much sense these days. At least do a raid 1. Raid 6 is better I think personally.

If I’m not mistaken on those drives they have a wd utility that allows you to change the raid type.

 

[SennaSempre]

If I bought a SATA Hot-Swap Docking Station (if they come set up for RAID 0 drives, I don't know?) would the drives sync up and work or would they not because the RAID configuration may be stored in the PCB of the old housing - the WD MyBook Studio Edition II housing that it came with?

Also if I bought a new-used My Book Studio Edition II only to use the housing and pull out the new drives and replace them with my old drives...

I was told that I don’t want to install them into another My Book Studio Edition II chassis only for the new housing PCB to detect that there was a change of drives and that new housing PCB will “helpfully” wipe the partition information so I can use them as empties, loosing all of my data.

Would either or both of these 2 statements be true? Anyone have any experience with these particular RAID 0 setup WD Green Caviar drives?

 

[USAFRet]

Would either or both of these 2 statements be true?

Probably would not work.

The RAID controller lives in the enclosure. A completely different enclosure will almost certainly not work.

Putting them in a different enclosure might lead them to being wiped and reinitialized for a new array.

Anyone have any experience with these particular RAID 0 setup WD Green Caviar drives?

WD Green are absolutely not recommended for RAID 0. Even WD says this.

https://support-in.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/12629/~/internal-drive:-desktop-drive-raid-0-&-raid-1-support
"Critical:
WD Blue, Green, or Black hard drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications."

 

[SennaSempre]

After reading alot of stuff and watching lots of YouTube videos these past few days, I'm thinking that this is a burnt out voltage diode on the either the PCB attached to the external drive casing or the PCB in the housing enclosure itself or both because this was a water-damaged short somewhere on the logic board. My 2 possible approaches here are...

1) buy another exact sister model; housing, drives the whole package, and swap the BIOS ROM chips from the old PCB's on the drive casings to the new drives' PCB's and mount those new boards onto the old recovery drives. BUT will that work or do I have to do the same swap with the RAID Controller chip on the PCB in the housing enclosure from the old PCB to the new PCB as well?

2) or still do as I explained above but use an aftermarket dual SATA RAID docking station. BUT will that work or do I have to have the WD RAID Controller from the PCB in the housing enclosure for the 2 drives (was set up as RAID 0 by default) to co-mingle with each other to access the data? If it doesn't work then I am forced to do the 1st scenario just to use the WD housing and it's PCB.

 

[SennaSempre]

@fzabkar you are right about DMDE you said it many times in other forums to, its very good.

I have been watching YouTube videos comparing the DD Command and DMDE since its a good way to get a visual on their completed steps before I start and come to those steps.

Both approaches seem quite easy to do even for a novice like myself but the DMDE GUI does make things more simplified and explanatory. It's actually quite a powerful program.

Right now I'm testing out these 2 approaches using smaller, mostly empty other SSD's before I start my real recovery. I'm using 2 SSD 480 GB for this bench test.

I also have re-purchased the exact same model WD MyBook Studio II but with 4 TB in size (mine is 6 TB) and that is still in RAID 0 by default. (Could be used for PCB swap and BIOS ROM soldering swap if I need to)

Testing SSD source drive holds only an OSX op system at 18 GB and no other personal files. SSD destination drive is empty, and the write speed is 1% per minute so it's going to take 1 hr and 30 min to complete.

When creating a disk image or cloning it, both DD Command and DMDE wants to use the whole destination disk space. (Side Note: my recovery 6 TB RAID 0 drives have 3 to 4 TB of used data on them)

My question is: the full 3 TB Disk 1 recovery drive will be cloned to the new 4 TB Raid 0 enclosure. Then how will I be able to clone the 2nd 3 TB Disk 2 recovery drive without overwriting the first 3 TB Disk 1 recovery drive as the disk image/clone method wants to use the whole destination disk?

And if I split the new WD MyBook into 2 partitions (to not overwrite the 2nd disk image over the 1st one) then how would I be able to link up those 2 partitions in RAID 0 if it's no longer 1 drive and now 2 separate drives?

Update: I just completed a test run on the 2 SSD 500 GB's and it took 2 full hours to copy sectors to the destination drive which shows nothing copied, no change in disk info or in disk utility, how can that be?