I have a WD Elements external hard drive. It used to disconnect randomly from the computer. The other day when I was uncompressing a file in it, it disconnected and now it is not detected by the PC and the LED doesn’t light unless I press the adapter cable against the upper part of the hard drive. When I do that it blinks.
I bought a new USB adapter but it doesn’t work either. Maybe the hard drive’s USB port is broken. I am looking for anyone’s who had a similar experience opinion. Is it possible the problem to be the USB port or do you think it is another issue?
I bought a Brand New WD Elements years ago … it’s USB was faulty right out of the box.
Returned it for another one … it worked fine.
If returning it is not an option … remove it from it’s enclosure, disconnect the USB Interface Board and place it in a 3rd party enclosure and it will work fine.
Did this today with 2 older WD Elements … nothing wrong with them, but they where USB2.0, so i removed them from their enclosures, removed the USB Interface board and then placed the hard drives into a 3rd party USB3.0 enclosure which supports SATA hard drives and they work fine … and data transfer is a LOT faster with USB3.0
I would like to ask you a few questions if possible:
When you had that experience with that faulty WD Elements because of the faulty USB, the LED didn’t light, like in my case, right?
If remove the complete PCB (USB Interface Board) I dont have to weld, right?
You say “place it in a 3rd party enclosure”, I don’t understand why do I have to change the hard drive enclosure, isn’t enough to change the USB Interface Board?
My broken hard drive already supports USB 3.0 but I dont know if it is SATA, but the hard drive was made in 2017 so I think so.
I have found those USB Interface Boards in AliExpress, with the same PCB number.
In the AliExpress site says that I also have to change the BIOS chip in order to make the PCB compatible with the hard drive, did you do that? https://es.aliexpress.com/item/32977450385.html
Because enclosures are easier to find and a lot cheaper … around €10
Nope … bought an enclosure, plug and plug.
No messing about with BIOS chips … which sounds technical and could go wrong if you don’t know what you’re doing. (€44 is an expensive mistake, if it goes wrong or doesn’t work)
Just to explain in photos i took off a 10 year old external hard drive … The hard drive is a standard SATA drive with a USB Board Adaptor which can be removed and the hard drive placed in any standard SATA enclosure.
