Is it possible to flash BIOS of a Dead WD Green 1TB Drive

[chinaguy]

A WD Green 1TB of a friend from a WD Essential external drive box has failed, it will not even spin up when powered. I took it to WD Data recovery service here in Shanghai and the "Techie" said the BIOS has failed and the company wants $500 USD to recover the Data from the drive, about 800GB of music!!!

Is there any way I can flash the BIOS of the drive myself as the Drive does not appear in the Windows Disc Manager!

Or do I just tell my friend to take the hit in the pocket to get his Music Collection Back?

[MadMike261]

As far as I know your pc needs to be able to detect the drive to do a firmware upgrade.
Didnt even know drives had BIOS.

Did you or the techie remove the drive from its enclosure and test it that way?

How did your friend acquire this music? Depending on how he got it he can evaluate if 500$ is worth the effort of re-downloading / ripping it again.
Also insert back-up rant :P

[CrazyNutz]

If you can find the same model (same model #) drive you can remove the logic board from a good drive, and install it on your friends drive. This should cost < $100

I have successfully done this several times, however not in many years but I would expect the trick to still work.

[chinaguy]

I am just wondering if I am going to be charged to repair a BIOS on the Disc when I could do it myself.

[chinaguy]

Well with over 1200 views and no offers of advice I take it that the drive can not be fixed and another paper weight is born.

Lucky my friend has copies of his music back in England but its another 3 months before he goes home again!

[C-N]

^^^^ What CrazyNutz said

I do this all the time with many different drives. Just remove 3/4 screws & unplug the ribbon cable connector & swap out the controller card for a known working one.

Oh & why don't you/your friend run a RAID mirror for stuff like this?

[chinaguy]

^^^^ What CrazyNutz said

I do this all the time with many different drives. Just remove 3/4 screws & unplug the ribbon cable connector & swap out the controller card for a known working one.

Oh & why don't you/your friend run a RAID mirror for stuff like this?

I am trying to track down a working board for a Green 1TB EARS, so if anyboady has one to send please let me know.

I do use RAID at home for my music and photo collection, then I also have them backed up onto an external hard drive. Then Every year I back up onto DVD just for safety. My friend has a copy of his music collection back home in the UK, I am just going to try and recover the data to give it ago and see if it works!