Recovery Force® Data Recovery Forum

I have a 7-8 yr old WD Mybook essentials/elemnet.....2 Tb externel drive. It stopped working, I read it was probly the sata to usb controller, so I opened it up got number off the controller and ordered a new one. Put it on, it powered up but computer wouldnt see it. I could see it in device manager and it said device is working properly, I could see it in Disk Management but for some reason it showed to have 2 partitions (dont know why), and both said UnAllocated. so I posted this on a wd community forum and asked. ( https://community.wd.com/t/my-book-esse ... g/269015/4 )

The method I did from instructions did a quick format to drive, now showing in My Computer. I ran Steller data recovery and saved to a different 4 TB HD. it save #Root and a folder Raw Data, which I cant see anything I reckonize and cant open any of the weird file extensions, what zipped files say cannot be opened, not an archive.

Please tell me what I can do,....not concerned over all the data, just all my recording sessions and music files.

OMG. I cannot believe what you were advised to do. That is pretty much anti-data recovery advice. Two things. The PCB needs to have the EEPROM chip swapped to the new PCB, and the data is likely encrypted through the USB bridge board.

My suggestion is to stop whatever you are doing and take the drive to a data recovery pro (not a computer store). This should be a relatively easy recovery for a pro (ie not expensive provided nothing else is wrong with it).

If you need a recommendation, let us know.

First off, Stellar is absolutely garbage promoted only by a bunch of spammers looking to get a commission.

Your best option is to have the drive recovered by a reputable data recovery professional who can recover the data quickly and safely. It should cost under $500 by a trustworthy lab.

Any application or person who suggests to do a format of a drive (overwriting data) should be ready to take full responsibility for causing more damage than good.

Some possible reasons for your issue:

1. the usb to SATA bridge replacement is not using the same controller and isn't properly interpreting the sector size
2. the file system is unsupported by Stellar
3. issues with the drive

Step 1 should have been - get a clone of the drive (best practice to avoid accidental writing to the drive and to get an image before the drive fails)
Step 2 - scan the drive with a reputable data recovery program such as UFS Explorer or R-Studio
Step 3 - save recovered files to a new drive

lovely,.....I was really worried and cringed when I read that, and like a dummie did it. I was hoping I could do this with some guidance and hoping from someone that knew what they was doing since on disability I cant afford to have it done.......boy I messed up

Thank ya'll for responding and letting me know what needs to be done.

Hollywood691 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 21, 2021 7:08 pm lovely,.....I was really worried and cringed when I read that, and like a dummie did it. I was hoping I could do this with some guidance and hoping from someone that knew what they was doing since on disability I cant afford to have it done.......boy I messed up

Thank ya'll for responding and letting me know what needs to be done.

I posted on that thread to criticize the advice given. If I were you, I'd go back and ask if the person giving advice is now willing to cover the costs to have a professional clean up the mess that they guided you to make...unlikely, but they need to understand that they are giving bad advice.

Thanks @lcoughey for commenting on there, I too left one there.

so I'm guessing no matter what recovery software I run on it, they are all gonna be RAW DATA,....because of the PCB? is that right or wrong?

I had started Disk Drill and it started finding .pss files., having No idea what the heck that is ......I stopped it. and am just leaving it alone. Im gonna have some pissed off musicians at me for losing these recording sessions,........

Disk Drill is right up there with Stellar as a data recovery program that is garbage. If the drive was originally encrypted with the old bridge and that encryption was lost when switching to the new bridge, you could find that your scans are going to bring up a lot of senseless garbage either way.

Also, just to be clear, the drive was formatted for windows before you followed the instructions to reformat it, right?

I dont think I ever formatted it, as far as I can remember, I bought it maybe 6-7-8 yrs ago from Wal-mart, plugged it in and started using it for an external HD. I have only ever used it on One desktop computer that runs win7. (went thru brain cancer/major brain surgery about 10 yrs ago,...sometimes memory gets a little blurry lol)

So it was either FAT32/exFAT or NTFS to be running in a windows environment. This is a good thing. Another program you can try is Reclaime.

But is it going to be RAW DATA,....because of the PCB is not the same?


Im gonna have to send you both PCB's along with the drive right? Then sell a kidney and nutt to pay for it...lol