Hey all-
I’ve got a WD My Passport Ultra USB 3.0 2TB drive that’s having trouble spinning up. Opened up the enclosure to find the USB connection soldered onto the drive itself. Any chance I can remove the whole controller unit and replace? And if so, any ideas what kind of controller this is and where to get it/how to do it?
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You have to read out the calibration data and write to new controller for replacement, swapping just the board won’t work. Not to mention you are not sure whether this is controller issue or drive mechanism issue.
Hard drive repair does not make economical sense if your target is the drive, data recovery is way beyond average DIY level, so don’t bother to repair it yourself.
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I suggest that you very carefully try to detach the USB connector from the drive. If you can successfully do that, you can connect the drive as an internal drive to try to read the data off of it. And if it won’t read in Windows, you could boot your computer to Linux live and then try to read the drive - sometimes Linux does a better job of reading a drive than Windows.
As for replacing the circuit board on the drive, the only way that that will work (and this is a maybe, not a for sure) is if you can manage to find an identical hard drive, and then swap the boards on the two drives. I know a guy who has swapped boards on two identical drives and was then able to read the questionable drive.
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