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HDR / The work we take on / Western Digital drives

Specialist · Western Digital drives

Western Digital recovery in Hull. A My Book, a My Passport, a bare Blue or Red — each is a different problem.

The majority of WD drive products delivered to our laboratory for repair consist of external products such as My Passport, My Book, Elements and occasionally Easystore. Each product contains an ordinary hard disk drive but the circuit board located in front of this device is not ordinary, due to encryption occurring while data is passing through the circuit board, whether or not a password has been assigned. These boards contain the encryption keys which are required to decrypt the data. Internal drives supplied to the laboratory arrive bare, including Blue and Black (from desktop and laptop computers), Red (from a NAS) and Purple (from digital recorders). Shingled drives read data at lower speeds and require multiple short passes to complete reading. Regardless of what type of drive arrives, the first step is to make a read-only clone of the drive. All subsequent work occurs on the clone. Most drives we receive are sent to us by post from across Hull and the surrounding areas of the East Riding. After obtaining a price quotation by telephone or through our online form, you can also drop off your unit at our Leeds intake laboratory (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, no appointment needed).

Only pay if we recover your data, on most jobs Free to look at, then one fixed price Parcels come in from Beverley, Grimsby and Skegness

An engineer will take the details
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Western Digital: putting a name to the symptom.

Nothing similar? Go to the triage →
What you seeWhat the fault isWhat to try
The My Passport will spin but never appear.The mainboard that performs the encryption for the disk has failed, however the physical disk itself is often fine.Obtain a quote first, then please send your device in its entirety including any cables.
A WD Red has dropped out of its NAS box.Only one disk of the total number of disks in your RAID set has failed. In addition to losing access to that particular disk, rebuilding the set may make things worse.Please delay rebuilding your RAID set until after it has been completely imaged.
There is no previous footage visible in the recorder.Recorders overwrite themselves, and how far back varies depending on how much footage there was.Please remove the recorder's power source immediately.
It clicks once, then it won't go further and makes clicking noises again.The heads aren't reading properly and the drive resets repeatedly.Please pull the power cord out of it.
Now the drive displays itself as RAWThe file system header has gone from the WD drive; the information beneath it may still exist.Do not accept any offer to fix it
If you copy files off it, it will take forever to completeWeak sectors, shingled disks, or bothStop copying files off it. Clone it.
Send it to us: get a quote first, either over the telephone or via our online quote form. Then carefully package it to prevent damage in transit, insure it for its full value and post the package using a trackable service to the Leeds intake laboratory; alternatively you may drop it off there (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, no appointment needed). For laptops, PCs, Macs and recorders, we require only the drive unit itself (storage soldered to the board is not taken on; if you're not sure which kind you have, ring us first); for RAID arrays and servers, we just need the individual disks, labelled by their respective bays; for a NAS, send the drives if you can remove them, but if not, please include the entire NAS device. A single external drive goes whole, with its cable and power adapter. We pay for return postage. If you would like an engineer to inspect the packaging prior to taping the box closed, please give us a call first. Further information is available on our sending page.

Which WD you have, and why it matters.

My Passport and My BookBoth units contain standard disks. Both units have special boards. These boards encrypt data going through them. This happens whether you enter a password or not. Your encryption key is stored on this board. Obtain a quote before sending in your unit. Send the entire unit including the case, cable, and any power source.
Elements and EasystoreProducts sold without WD's backup software are classified as "Plain" cases. Regardless of how these products are constructed (i.e., products that pass the disk through and those that do not, and you cannot tell which from the outside), a customer should follow these steps before sending a product to the laboratory for repair: obtain a quote prior to posting your product. Please send your product complete with its cable(s) and any included power supplies. Do not send a bare disk.
Blue, Black, Red, PurpleWestern Digital labels their internal drives according to colour. Blue is what you would find inside most computers. Black is faster than Blue. Red is designed for NAS boxes. Therefore, Red usually comes in sets. When we receive a Red drive, we need to treat the entire set as a single item. Purple drives are specifically made for recorders used continuously throughout the day (i.e., video recording). That is why Purple is often filled with footage that can't be played.
SMR, and what it costs youWD drives using shingled magnetic recording technology write data in overlapping bands. This creates problems for users wishing to alter any content within the band, since the whole band around it then has to be rewritten. When a WD drive employing shingled magnetic recording technology is functioning properly, it operates at a slower rate compared to drives using traditional recording technologies. Additionally, when these types of WD drives fail, they become even slower to access. As an example, imaging a failed WD drive using shingled magnetic recording technology may take days instead of hours. Short passes are used during this imaging process. No matter how much money a customer pays for repair services, it will not speed up accessing data in short passes. Once a band has been overwritten, all data originally residing in that band is forever lost.

From the box arriving to the files going back.

01

A case number first, then a free diagnosis Free

Every piece of gear that shows up receives a case number on the very same day it arrives. An engineer examines it and determines what is really wrong with it and there is no charge for this. We give you straight language about which files we will be able to copy from the disk and which ones we won't be able to. Then we provide you with a single price quote, in writing, based upon these findings. We don't begin working on anything until you agree to the quoted price.

The diagnosis is freeOne price, put in writingNothing to pay yet
02

Working out which half has failed

Each component, i.e., the enclosure and the hard disk drive, is tested independently, because a portable drive may cease operation at either end. After initial testing of each component, everything else is performed on a read-only copy created from the failing WD drive. This read-only copy is produced in short passes using sector-by-sector methods with the sectors that refused to transfer being placed at the end of the process.

Nothing written to your diskImaged read-only, in passes
03

Get past the encryption

The key for a My Passport, or a My Book is located on the USB board alone. Therefore, either the image is taken using that board, or the key is removed from that board and applied to the copy. The same is true regarding any custom password that you have created; that will need to be used as well. It isn't possible to bypass either of those two requirements and you will be told so.

Key read off the boardDecrypted, never guessed at
04

The file system rebuilt on the copy

Once we have completed a full image, we rebuild the partitions and directories of the copy rather than your drive. Then files are opened (photographs, videos, documents etc.) because simply having a file listed by a particular name does not verify that the contents of that file are valid. Any items that were returned damaged during this process are documented as such.

Files opened, not just listedDamaged ones marked as such
05

You sign it off, then it comes back

You will not be charged while you think about this. First, you receive a list of everything that was recovered from the drive. Once you have seen the list and given us the go-ahead, the bill comes next. Files are returned to you on media purchased specifically for this job and we cover the return postage as well. Your job is kept open by us until you can view them on your personal computer.

You approve the listing firstCopied onto new mediaReturn postage at our cost

What turns up most often

  • Do not open a drive that is no longer working: there are instructions provided for people wanting to repurpose their healthy drive. Once you have removed a failed drive from its housing you are left with a disk full of noise and a board that contained the encryption keys.
  • Do not accept when Windows offers to initialise it: Windows presents you with the option to initialise the drive because it can see nothing on it, which means Windows can't read the volume, which is the symptom, not the cause. By clicking OK on initialising the drive you create a new signature and a new partition table on top of an encrypted volume. This represents at least another error to resolve before anyone even begins to work on resolving the initial error.
  • A Red out of a NAS is always a group problem, not just the disk that went bad. The NAS contains a set of disks, and the order that the disks are sitting in, the block size used by the RAID array and the overall configuration of the system all matter as much as the condition of the individual disks. Get a quote first, then please send all of the disks at one time, with a note of which bay each disk came from. If you can't remove the disks from your NAS unit, please send us the entire unit. The worst possible scenario is usually rebuilding your NAS onto a disk that is already weak.
  • Drive Utilities and Dashboard are gauges, not fixes: they will read SMART data, run diagnostics, and push firmware updates. None of this will give you a file, and running an extended test on a failing disk uses up reads you would have needed.

What we can promise and what we cannot: our work is on storage devices, including all types of WD media, external and internal, that have failed, been dropped, been reformatted, or been deleted. If the USB board can be repaired or read, the key stored on it will go directly into the image created of your original data. Folders will appear as they did originally. There are things we simply cannot do. We cannot get round a password you set and have forgotten, as the key is derived from this password. The amount of bench time used does not make a difference here. We also cannot recover any data after it has been overwritten on a shingled drive or any other type of drive. We do not accept phones or tablets. The free diagnosis is there to determine which of these apply.

One case from the casebook.

HU · HUL-2026-0846LOGGED ✓

A My Book Duo, striped from new, with one disk down

A studio located on Humber Street sent in a My Book Duo that would no longer mount. The two disks inside the enclosure were striped and therefore each contained half of every file. There was head damage to one of the disks and the second disk read perfectly clean. Both disks were duplicated end-to-end, the failed one using a donor head stack and three different passes. Once the duplicate images were created, the stripe was recreated from the duplicates. The key was found on the enclosure board which had also survived. The files were returned to the customer on a brand-new hard drive and organised exactly as they were when stored on the Duo.

Both disks copied end to end3 days after it landed

Before you box it up.

Do these first

  • Unplug it now and let it stay unplugged until you decide to proceed further.
  • Please receive a quote before sending in the case, the board, the disk and the cable together.
  • Include the power supply with all mains powered units.
  • Please provide us with the exact model number of the device, and if a password was ever established on it.

What not to do

  • Taking the disk out of its case first.
  • Letting Windows initialise or format it.
  • Tapping it, freezing it, opening it
  • Rebuilding a NAS using a failing disk

Asked most weeks, answered here.

Can I not just take the disk out of the case?

If it has stopped working then no. On a My Passport or a My Book the USB board does more than just pass along the data. It also passes all of the data through encryption. Whether or not you had originally set a password for your drive, the encryption key required to decrypt this data is stored on the board. Therefore, if you take a healthy disk from a dead case and place it into a SATA docking station, you will get nothing but noise, or be asked to initialise it. Thus, we need to receive both the board and the disk, in their housing, with the cable and the power adapter (for desktop units). First get a quote by calling us or submitting a quote request via our website. Then post it, tracked and insured, to our Leeds intake lab, or drop it off there Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. If you have previously disassembled the housing, please retain the housing. We want to use the board that is inside of it.

Why is copying off my WD Elements drive so slow?

This is typically due to how the tracks were originally recorded on the platters. Some Western Digital (WD) disks write tracks in overlapping bands. While this allows more information to fit onto a single disk space, every time a change is made to a track, it changes the entire band surrounding that area. This can appear as a pause during normal usage. An unhealthy drive may run continuously for an hour and then abruptly stop. Pressuring the drive further while attempting to make copies will worsen its performance. To fix this issue, we simply need to perform a slow backup of the original disk in small segments (the easiest parts first), and this process will take several days.

I set a password on it years ago and cannot remember it

We may be able to assist you but we cannot until we know that the external drive belongs to you. A password is used to decrypt the data encrypted on the boards of these drives; therefore there is no method to "talk" around the encryption (i.e., it works as intended.) The probability of success is based upon the amount of information that you can recall regarding how you constructed your original passwords, which words and dates you built them from, how long they were, and which substitution techniques you employed. Without such information, we would not be successful. However, we will inform you of this fact before any monies are exchanged. If you never established a password, all of the above does not apply and this becomes an ordinary recovery operation.

One of the WD Reds in my NAS has failed. What do I send?

All of them. Also include a note indicating what bay each disk was removed from (if the drives cannot be removed, send us the entire NAS). First get a quote by calling us or submitting a quote request via our website. Then post them to our Leeds intake lab using trackable methods and insure them, or drop them off there Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. When files are written to a NAS, they are distributed among the various members of the set. This means that one member will contain parts of many different files and/or complete versions of none. Once all of the disks are imaged, we determine their original order and configuration by examining these images. From this point on, we put the array back together as a single entity on our workbench. Most importantly, do not allow the NAS to automatically attempt to rebuild itself onto a new member before sending the disks to us. When rebuilding occurs, each surviving member's contents are read hard. This is typically where the second disk fails.

What people read after this.

A stopped server → Asus laptops → Multi-disk systems → Everything we take in →

A drive left switched off loses nothing more.

Leave it off. There are only a few start attempts left in your failing drive and each attempt uses up a little more of what remains. Our complimentary diagnosis will determine what files are readable.

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