Case study of a Western Digital MY Passport for Mac?
Western Digital Data Recovery
WD MY Passport for Mac portable hard drives formatted for Apple computers
WD5000BMVW-11AJGS1 500 GB portable Hard Disk Drive
Part Number WDBLUZ5000ASL-03
WD Family: FBLite
A distraught lady telephoned asking if we could help with a broken hard drive that had been to another recovery company. Explaining that her hard drive had been dropped and every time she plugged it in, it made clicking sounds. She then took it to her local computer repair shop, who advised her she needed professional data recovery. Also advising her to find a professional data recovery company on Google who could help recover her data.
Like most people, she had no idea about data recovery, but began searching for data recovery companies on Google. Feeling reassured by the glossy website and freephone number of a company, she shipped her drive over to them. Under the impression it would be a few hundred pounds for the recovery, she was horrified to receive a 4-figure quote. Understandably, she started panicking and reaching out to ‘other’ data recovery companies to see if this sounded right.
Data Recovery
As one of those ‘other’ companies, Dragon Data Recovery knows all too well how the big data recovery companies operate. And giving the customer what they want, is not always at the top of their list.
To cut it short, we offered our help, agreed a rough price, then wished her luck in getting her drive back. Several months after the enquiry, we received the drive from the customer who told us they had been through hell. The big data recovery company wouldn’t send the drive back unless she paid them £25 for the privilege.
So, after all that upheaval and stress, finally, it was our time to see what all the fuss was about. Get this WD5000BMVW-11AJGS1 into our clean room for a deep dive inspection!
Cleanroom
Firstly, the deep cut around the outer perimeter of the top platter surface is bad. This means it’s the end of the line for any data residing on this surface. Although, not necessarily the end of the line for recovering any data from the others.
Once a hard drive has started clicking, denying access to the data, DIY data recovery is no longer an option. Professional data recovery is the only way to proceed (if you value the data).
However, this drive will have started life as a 1 TB model at the factory. But due to there being too many defects on one of the surfaces, it has been purposely factory modified. So, it will only use 3 surfaces, resulting in it becoming a smaller capacity drive. Therefore, with this data recovery case, technically the customer has already lost 1/3rd of their data before we have even begun. (top surface damage)
Secondly, we observed the physically modified head stack assembly, indicating that some work had already taken place.
Moreover, a closer inspection of the remaining platter surfaces yielded some debris contamination, yet nothing too serious. This will be cleaned at a later stage, but everything else looked good.
Once decontamination completed, it would be worthwhile fitting a new head stack assembly. Which would take us one step closer to repairing the drive ready for a Western Digital Data Recovery.
Data Recovery
After the new HSA had been fitted to the Western Digital hard drive, the drive was then powered up. The PC3000 Express data recovery machine was used to make extensive firmware modifications to get the drive to come ready. This was not an easy task with a drive in this condition, as it was extremely unstable.
Nonetheless, having previously worked on many of these Western Digital FBLite hard drives, we had plenty of tricks to employ. We needed to stabilise the drive to recover a decent amount of the customer’s important data, making it a viable recovery.
Obviously, the customer was delighted with the result – as were we – and she was also happy with the bill. Which was not in the 4-figures region.
Furthermore, there are not many drives you can recover from in this state. But these Western Digital WD5000BMVW-11AJGS1 hard drives are very robust and well-engineered, unlike the newer models. So, as well as skills & equipment, luck also played its part in this recovery.
Therefore, it goes without saying, if you value your data, and your hard drive has started clicking. Power it off ASAP and seek only professional help.
