Data recovery for Western Digital WD50NDZW not recognised after a drop in Florennes
The problem
A 5 TB Western Digital external drive, model WD50NDZW, held almost three years of photos and travel stories from a family of travel bloggers, followed by thousands of readers and regular contributors to Belgian public broadcaster RTBF. The drive was no longer recognised by the computer. A first laboratory in France had diagnosed a "firmware problem" and proposed "rewriting the servo tracks", a procedure that does not exist in data recovery practice. That wording alarmed the family, who took their drive back and contacted us on the advice of an IT colleague. No repair attempt had been made: the drive reached us untouched.
Our intervention
On a WD50NDZW the USB bridge and the controller share one board and there is no SATA port, so the electronics have to be modified before any diagnosis. Four capacitors are desoldered to break the link between the USB bridge and the controller, then four wires are soldered in their place to create a SATA interface. The ROM is then read and modified, because in this state the controller stays locked by default. The drive is initialised on the PC-3000 and each head is tested individually: one dead head, the others working. A head map is built, the drive passport is edited to block any reallocation, and everything reachable through the live heads is imaged first. Only then, in the ISO 5 cleanroom, the head stack is replaced with a donor set from our stock to read the remaining surfaces. The complete image is analysed in Data Extractor and the data copied to the client's new drive.
Result
The initial diagnosis was wrong: it was the heads, not the firmware, and a mechanical intervention in the cleanroom was enough. Almost all of the photos were recovered; only a few images show a missing line of pixels. The data were delivered on a new drive, with a copy kept until the family confirmed their backup.
What the client says
« After asking IT friends and colleagues, trawling the forums and lighting a few candles, we found our saviour: Takhir Saidov, the owner of Belgium Data Recovery. A data recovery champion who, thanks to his expertise and specialised equipment, brought almost all of our memories back to life. He had warned us of 1% loss, but overall we got everything back. […] You can trust Belgium Data Recovery with your eyes closed. We had a very good contact and he kept us regularly informed of the progress. »
(translated from French)
Frequently asked question
Western Digital WD50NDZW not recognised after a drop: can the data be recovered?
On a WD50NDZW the USB bridge and the controller share one board and there is no SATA port, so the electronics have to be modified before any diagnosis. Four capacitors are desoldered to break the link between the USB bridge and the controller, then four wires are soldered in their place to create a SATA interface. The ROM is then read and modified, because in this state the controller stays locked by default. The drive is initialised on the PC-3000 and each head is tested individually: one dead head, the others working. A head map is built, the drive passport is edited to block any reallocation, and everything reachable through the live heads is imaged first. Only then, in the ISO 5 cleanroom, the head stack is replaced with a donor set from our stock to read the remaining surfaces. The complete image is analysed in Data Extractor and the data copied to the client's new drive. The initial diagnosis was wrong: it was the heads, not the firmware, and a mechanical intervention in the cleanroom was enough. Almost all of the photos were recovered; only a few images show a missing line of pixels. The data were delivered on a new drive, with a copy kept until the family confirmed their backup.
Related service: hard drive data recovery