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Best ways to Western Digital hard drive data recovery

Working with big quantities of information? You know the panic moment when you realize that you need something that you deleted a long time ago. This is the subject of this article : Best ways to Western Digital hard drive data recovery. First lets start with some general data recovery tricks, valid for all type of data devices, PC’s, Mac’s, phones.

Use cloud storage. For most regular users, cloud storage services represent the most reliable way how to protect themselves against data loss. Providers of these services are commonly located on the other side of the planet, and they use sophisticated backup systems at their storage facilities, resulting in multiple degrees of redundancy. Best of all, services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive have free plans with generous storage limits, which are more than enough for text documents.

To make sure it’s the hard drive and not one of the many other things that can go wrong when starting up a computer, if possible, remove the hard drive and plug it into another computer. Lots of PCs make this easy, but for any device, the process will be easier with a tool kit and universal drive adapter. Once you’ve removed the drive, plug it into a working computer. If you can see that drive’s files on the working computer, pull out anything essential and make copies. Yes, this is a big ask, especially for anyone who hasn’t ripped apart a computer before. But this will at least determine if the drive is the part that failed.

Is the drive sounding normal but is not detected or detected with the wrong capacity? This indicates a problem with some area of the firmware. For drives manufactured a few years back, there was a DIY solution for it. However, modern drives with this problem need to be sent to a data recovery service center to be repaired.

If the TVS diodes don’t smell burnt and show the correct digits when measuring them, then the problem is the PCB itself. A replacement PCB is required, but not just a straight swap. There is an 8 pin ROM chip on most PCBs that contains unique firmware info that is required to start up the drive. This needs to be moved from the old PCB to the new in order for the replacement to work. Some hard drives, especially Western Digitals, do not have this 8 pin chip—the firmware is stored in the main controller which is virtually impossible to move.

Modern solid state drives (SSDs) in newer portable computers are much more difficult to access. These laptops are built very thin, and reaching the casing screws is sometimes impossible. Even if the case can be opened, many of these drives are inaccessible and sometimes even soldered directly onto the other components, so removal is virtually impossible. If someone has an SSD laptop that’s inoperable and contains important data, then the only viable option is to send the machine to a specialised shop. This company will open the device in a clean room and have the right sockets to match to the laptop’s proprietary connectors. While such recovery is usually successful, it could potentially cost thousands and will require a considerable amount of time.

DoYourData can help you easily recover deleted, formatted or lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive including WD Elements 500GB, WD Elements 750GB, WD Elements 1TB, WD Elements 1.5TB, WD Elements 2TB etc. DoYourData also can recover lost data from other kind of devices, such as hard drive, USB drive, Memory card, SD card etc. See more info at Western Digital hard drive data recovery.