I have a western digital mybook 1tb with 2 drives in raid but i could not find the power cable and me in a rush to access my data decided to stupidly plug in a cable from a old toshiba laptop that fit into the power slot. There are two rings of light on my enclosure and when i did this the inner blue light started to blink so i quickly unplugged it. I later found the correct cable and when i put it in the inner light was still blinking and the mybook was not coming on at all, it was completely silent and the fan was not even spinning. The green power light on the cable is also blinking when it is plugged into the mybook but it is steady when it is taken out. Is there anything i can do to salvage this or is all my data completely gone. Can anyone please help.
You probably burned the drive with too high of amps. You can try and RMA it, but it there are any burnt marks on the board for the drive case, they will most likely reject the RMA’d drive back to you. You could do an advanced RMA, so you can trade out the drives and see if you can get your data back, before sending the drive in for the RMA. This way at least you get a chance to retrieve your data.
If you are lucky, the damage will have been contained by the drive’s TVS diode. Alternatively, there may be a protection device on the USB-SATA bridge board inside the enclosure.
Both scenarios should respond to an easy no-cost DIY fix.
If you open the enclosure and upload detailed photos of the component sides of each board to a file sharing service, one of us may be able to help you.
Good luck.
bill_s wrote:
You probably burned the drive with too high of amps.
Just so we’re not leading Hawkman astray for future knowledge - there’s no such thing as ‘too high of amps’. Devices only draw as much current (amps) as they need. You can use a power supply capable of 50000 amps if you like. It’s only used if needed. It is the voltage that is of importance. You can generally get away with a miniscule amount of volts higher than what the device requires but too high of volts is what will burn something out.
Thx for the replies guys. Are there any guides i can use to show me how to open up my enclosure cause i want to remove the diode so i can fix it but i dont want to accidently break anything in the process
Google finds lots of guides, but you’ll have to decide which is best for you:
http://www.google.com/search?q=mybook+1tb+disassembly&sourceid=opera&num=25
Similar story…plugged in my laptop cord into external hard drive (WD6400AACS-00G8B1). I am hoping the 12V voltage protection is just blown. But, I cannot determine where that is on my board. Could you assist me with this task? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I can’t see your photo until it is approved, but look for D4 (12V TVS diode) and D3 (5V TVS diode) near the power connector. Also check resistors R64 and R67.
The PCB in your photo is the USB-SATA bridge board. There is not enough detail for me to recognise any protection devices. In any case you need to access the board that is part of the hard drive itself. That’s where you will find D4 and R64, the most likely suspects. Remove the bridge board, then remove the hard drive, and then remove the drive’s PCB.
OK, I will pull it apart and look for it. I appreciate your help and will post my hopefully sucessful endevor.
OK, I finally got the correct tools to open it up, removed D4 and plugged it in (with the correct power supply). Now I think I am getting the click of death noise. Before I did this, all I could hear was “electroinic noise”…like it had power but nothing happened. Now it sounds like it runs, click, runs, click…I turned it off immediately.
I suppose I should wait a few minutes before I post, but newest update. Book powers on, no noise. However, my computer doesn’t see it. I can see it under my devices and printers, but I cannot see the data on it.
Ok, after several hours reading tech blogs, watching you tube videos, and a lot of messing around with this thing…I successfully recovered all of my pictures and music from the hard drive. Your knowledge has been greatly appreciated and not found anywhere else on the “amazing interweb” ;)
I plan on showing my tech guys at work this trick (snipping the voltage protector) because they didn’t believe that it would work.
As for the clicking sound…I keep disconnecting the power and trying over and over again. It would power up, click and then shut down (lights would stay on though). So I did two things, which one is probably not really recommended. After wrapping in paper towels and putting in ziploc with rice I put the hard drive in the freezer (I figured I had nothing to lose at this point) and I restarted my computer and everything worked just like new. And now everything is backed up…just like it should have been in the first place.
TVS diodes are discussed on an almost daily basis at various HDD forums. In fact I answer 1 or 2 questions per day, on average.
Congratulations. 
