Water-Damaged WD MyBook Studio Edition II Quad Interface 6TB

[SennaSempre]

Hello, this is my 1st post and the reason why I joined. I have a water-damaged hard drive 6TB that had water on-or-in it for 1 day and then I dried it out. I see no water corrosion damage anywhere on the drive itself or the internal control board in the chassis or housing.

This hard drive would not power up when plugged into a 15" MacBook Pro but it did when plug into a 27" iMac using the same stock AC adapter. The power status with the 27" iMac has the front light blinking but no spinning of the platters.

I read that it could be a problem with the control board in the housing unit and to use a SATA-USB connector straight into the computer which I've done to no avail. I've tried this 3.3V pin tape-hack explained in Step 14 here -

How to Shuck a WD Elements External Hard Drive

Shucking an external hard drive involves disassembling the external enclosure and harvesting the bare hard drive inside. From there, you can use...

www.ifixit.com

...and still nothing on both drives. I don't know what else I can do which is why I'm asking you. Some extra links to the exact model I have with the online manual and attached photos. Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you.

Online Manual - https://www.manua.ls/western-digital/my-book-studio-ii/manual

Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II review: Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II

Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II

www.cnet.com

Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II 6TB Review

www.anandtech.com

6TB Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II Review (WDH2Q60000)

In March, Western Digital announced an extension to their My Book Studio Edition II dual-drive storage…

www.storagereview.com

 

[SennaSempre]

If I bought a SATA Hot-Swap Docking Station (if they come set up for RAID 0 drives, I don't know?) would the drives sync up and work or would they not because the raid configuration may be stored in the PCB of the old housing - the WD MyBook Studio Edition II casing that it came with?

Also if I bought a new-used My Book Studio Edition II only to use the housing and pull out the new drives and replace them with my old drives...

I was told that I don’t want to install them into another My Book Studio Edition II chassis only for the new housing PCB to detect that there was a change of drives and that new housing PCB will “helpfully” wipe the partition information so I can use them as empties, loosing all of my data.

Would either or both of these 2 statements be true? Anyone have any experience with these particular RAID 0 setup WD drives?

 

[Jared]

WD externals very often encrypt/decrypt the data via that SATA-USB bridge adapter board. So it's not surprising that a generic USB/SATA adapter won't recognize the drive. There's a number on the board that you need to match, and you can usually get one on eBay for a reasonable price. Can you take a couple clear pictures of both sides of that adapter board?

 

[SennaSempre]

WD externals very often encrypt/decrypt the data via that SATA-USB bridge adapter board. So it's not surprising that a generic USB/SATA adapter won't recognize the drive. There's a number on the board that you need to match, and you can usually get one on eBay for a reasonable price. Can you take a couple clear pictures of both sides of that adapter board?

Hello Jared, the model I have is an old 2011 version which I believe is before their 256 AES encryption and MyCloud and all the key problems that MyBook Duo owners have in the later models. I also don't use WD proprietary disk management software. I just plug it into an OSX and that's all.

I'm thinking that this is a burnt out voltage diode on the either the PCB attached to the external drive casing or the PCB in the housing enclosure itself or both. My 2 possible approaches here are...

1) buy another exact sister model, housing drives the whole package and swap the BIOS ROM chips from the old PCB's on the drive casings to the new drive PCB's and mount those new boards onto the old recovery drives. BUT will that work or do I have to do the same swap with the RAID Controller chip on the PCB in the housing enclosure from the old PCB to the new PCB as well?

2) or still do as I explained above but use an aftermarket dual SATA RAID docking station. BUT will that work or do I have to have the WD RAID Controller from the PCB in the housing enclosure for the 2 drives (was set up as RAID 0 by default) to co-mingle with each other to access the data? If it doesn't work then I am forced to do the 1st scenario just to use the WD housing and it's PCB.

 

[Jared]

I also don't use WD proprietary disk management software.

Has nothing to do with the hardware level encryption.

old 2011 version

Long after they implemented encryption into most of their drives IIRC.

swap the BIOS ROM chips from the old PCB'

Getting way ahead of yourself here.

First off, how do the two drives sound when just powered on with nothing but a power cable? Do they sound like they spin up normally, a bit of crunching and then just quietly spinning?

If so, there's almost certainly nothing wrong with the PCBs. Although, you may want to take a pencil eraser and clean up those dirty contacts where it makes contact with the HSA pins (what you have in that red rectangle).

 

[SennaSempre]

The drives sound like nothing, no noise, no vibration, they don't spin up but power is going to the PCB in the enclosure since the display lights on the front go on for about 10 seconds then turn off. So I'm thinking that the enclosure's PCB should be okay (or maybe not) and there is no power transferring to the PCB's on the drives' casings themselves. Just troubleshooting what makes logical sense.

Question - If I buy a sister drive, the exact same enclosure and drives, (and I know that the RAID Controller in that enclosure is tied to the individual drives themselves) but if I simply swap the PCB's from the new drives and put them onto my old drives and put my old drives into the new enclosure... wouldn't 'that' enclosure's RAID Controller STILL correspond with those particular PCB's now mounted on the old drives and recognize them and not overwrite them? ...therefore I can access my data safely?

 

[SennaSempre]

I have been watching YouTube videos comparing the DD Command and DMDE since its a good way to get a visual on their completed steps before I start and come to those steps.

Both approaches seem quite easy to do even for a novice like myself but the DMDE GUI does make things more simplified and explanatory. It's actually quite a powerful program.

Right now I'm testing out these 2 approaches using smaller, mostly empty other SSD's before I start my real recovery. I'm using 2 SSD 480 GB for this bench test.

I also have re-purchased the exact same model WD MyBook Studio II but with 4 TB in size (mine is 6 TB) and that is still in RAID 0 by default. (Could be used for PCB swap and BIOS ROM soldering swap if I need to)

Testing SSD source drive holds only an OSX op system at 18 GB and no other personal files. SSD destination drive is empty, and the write speed is 1% per minute so it's going to take 1 hr and 30 min to complete.

When creating a disk image or cloning it, both DD Command and DMDE wants to use the whole destination disk space. (Side Note: my recovery 6 TB RAID 0 drives have 3 to 4 TB of used data on them)

My question is: the full 3 TB Disk 1 recovery drive will be cloned to the new 4 TB Raid 0 enclosure. Then how will I be able to clone the 2nd 3 TB Disk 2 recovery drive without overwriting the first 3 TB Disk 1 recovery drive as the disk image/clone method wants to use the whole destination disk?

And if I split the new WD MyBook into 2 partitions (to not overwrite the 2nd disk image over the 1st one) then how would I be able to link up those 2 partitions in RAID 0 if it's no longer 1 drive and now 2 separate drives?

Update: I just completed a test run on the 2 SSD 500 GB's and it took 2 full hours to copy sectors to the destination drive which shows nothing copied, no change in disk info or in disk utility, how can that be?

 

[bflcafe]

Hi there, and welcome to the community!

It sounds like you’re dealing with quite a challenging situation, but kudos to you for taking the initiative to troubleshoot and research. Let’s break down your situation and explore some possibilities based on the details you’ve shared.

Water Damage and Drying​

First, it’s great that you acted quickly to dry out the drive. However, even if there’s no visible corrosion on the exterior or the control board, water exposure could have caused subtle internal damage, particularly to the motor, heads, or electronics. These components are extremely sensitive, and even a short period of moisture ingress can lead to issues.

Observations​

• No Power on MacBook Pro but Power on iMac: The fact that the drive powers on with the iMac but not the MacBook suggests that power delivery might be a factor. Drives sometimes require a more robust power supply, especially after damage. However, the blinking front light and the absence of platter spinning indicate a deeper issue.
• No Success with SATA-USB Connector: If the drive still doesn’t spin up when connected directly via SATA-USB, it’s likely that the problem lies either with the drive’s internal components (like the spindle motor or heads) or the logic board itself.