You need a clean room to transfer heads as well as the proper tools. That plastic yellow part.. the part that holds the heads apart from each other when the drive is parked will have to be removed along with the head assembly in order to keep the heads from being damaged. Same for swapping in new heads.

The top part of the head actuator magnet will have to be removed as well.

Basically.. good luck unless you have the training and proper tools for doing a repair procedure such as that.

That second picture looks like a staged photo. There really isn't a way for the heads to break like that under normal circumstances. Something like that would have to be caused by either a large drop while the drive was spinning or by trying to remove the heads without having everything needed taken out first.

And IF the heads broke like that and the disk was still spinning or was powered on afterwards, it would destroy the platters with no hope of recovery.

Is the drive actually spinning up?

It could be that something on the PCB has gone bad. I would try that first. If that doesn't work, put the old PCB back on and send to a professional recovery place if you must have the data.

You have two main routes to go here:
- If the data is important, you should ALWAYS send it to a professional recovery service. It simply isn't worth the risk.

- If it's an experiment, go ahead and try it. You have two scenarios here:

* drive spins when powered up =>you shouldn't replace the PCB, only the heads. This is still very tricky, because the heads on newer WD use the lid to properly bolt on (which means that without a cover, you will likely crash the heads again)
* drive does not spin => swap PCB as well. Remember to swap the 8pin ROM between PCBs

If I were you, I would send it to a professional.

1. lesson to learn: never store data on a NAS with only a single drive. RAID 1 or 5/6 is a must.

2. if you need the data, don't even think about messing with the drive. Send it to a professional data recovery service and expect to pay at least 1000 bucks for getting the data off the drive. In the U.S., Ontrack is your friend. Had to do with them a couple of times. They have fair prices (for what they do, that is) and offer a free first look and estimate if you send the drive in.

I agree with what is written above: Never open the drive if you have important data on it...!

What kind of failure do you observe? If it still spins up, usual procedure is to make a 1:1 image on a working drive with tools like ddrescue and recover the files from the image...

This is a WD Green, so the failure is clear. These drives kind of self-destruct themselves by parking the heads already after a few seconds of being idle. So you have thousands of head load/unloads per hour, which will eventually kill the mechanical system. It's funny that WD even uses these in their NAS units, as WD only recommends using Red or Black series for a NAS.

I have two of exactly these drives as well running in my old gaming PC as RAID 1. One of it already had 300 bad sectors when it was new. 🤣

derSammler wrote on 2020-04-18, 18:15:

This is a WD Green, so the failure is clear. These drives kind of self-destruct themselves by parking the heads already after a few seconds of being idle. So you have thousands of head load/unloads per hour, which will eventually kill the mechanical system. It's funny that WD even uses these in their NAS units, as WD only recommends using Red or Black series for a NAS.

I have two of exactly these drives as well running in my old gaming PC as RAID 1. One of it already had 300 bad sectors when it was new. 🤣

Yes, this is the first gen. WD Mycloud NAS.
It's NOT a standard harddrive but a special one for this WD Mycloud. It has a special PCB that is also part of the Network interface.
WD does not use these Green drives in there NAS's anymore . They recommend the RED drives.

I think I will send this out to a data recovery service.

Know of any good ones ?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-18, 19:07:

It's NOT a standard harddrive but a special one for this WD Mycloud. It has a special PCB that is also part of the Network interface.

Then the picture is wrong, because the WD20EARS is a normal WD Green 2 TB SATA drive.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-18, 19:07:

I think I will send this out to a data recovery service.

Know of any good ones ?

Ontrack, as already written.

I dont know the rules about posting videos here, but search for "linus tech tips data recovery" on youtube. They tour a company that do this and you can see why it is not a DiY job when its important.

I’d be curious to hear the cost estimate for the professional data recovery.

Welcome to the My Cloud party

https://www.data-medics.com/data-recovery-blo … d-red-light-on/

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2020-04-18, 20:47:

Welcome to the My Cloud party

https://www.data-medics.com/data-recovery-blo … d-red-light-on/

Yes, I am aware these First Generation My Cloud NAS’s with the the WD Green drives are beginning to show there age.
This product model has reached it’s life expectancy.

I should have backed it up long ago as most hard drives only have a 3 year warranty.

Not only that but they use a EXT2 filesystem which is Linux so you need a Linux computer if you want to attach the drive
Directly And access the data.

The PCB shows sign of heat damage too.

Yes !....one of the networking PCB was bad . So i swapped it out from another WD MyCould NAS and was able to save
My main NAS. I am very happy now. That drive had al my important DOS stuff on it.

I have it power off now and am not going to power it back up until i am ready to backup that data on another drive.
I don’t trust these WD Green drives as they are beyond there warranty expiration date.
i have to buy a good drive to do that.
I think I will get a WD RED drive.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-18, 23:56:

Yes !....one of the networking PCB was bad . So i swapped it out from another WD MyCould NAS and was able to save My main NAS. […]
Show full quote

Yes !....one of the networking PCB was bad . So i swapped it out from another WD MyCould NAS and was able to save
My main NAS. I am very happy now. That drive had al my important DOS stuff on it.

I have it power off now and am not going to power it back up until i am ready to backup that data on another drive.
I don’t trust these WD Green drives as they are beyond there warranty expiration date.
i have to buy a good drive to do that.
I think I will get a WD RED drive.

Happy you have your data back .
And please, as mentioned before in this thread and others, consider

a) using RAID 1 or 6 (5 is not recommended on "large" capacity drives, starting at 4TB or so) on your NAS
b) keeping either a cold storage copy (normally disconnected drive) or a cloud copy of your data in addition to the NAS

I sleep much better at night doing both these things .

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-18, 23:56:

I don’t trust these WD Green drives as they are beyond there warranty expiration date.

You shouldn't trust any mechanical disk drive that passed its warranty period, no matter the brand. The golden rule is to always have a backup, even if it's a SATA hard drive put in a closet. It is better than nothing.

computerguy08 wrote on 2020-04-19, 07:00:

You shouldn't trust any mechanical disk drive that passed its warranty period, no matter the brand. The golden rule is to always have a backup, even if it's a SATA hard drive put in a closet. It is better than nothing.

Why that emphasis on "mechanical disk drive"? I own many hard disks that were manufactured before the world was even introduced to the first USB thumb drive - and they are still working fine. Mechanical disk drives are actually still the most reliable media for daily storage. And they have two advantages: before they fail, they normally start to act oddly, so you often have a chance to grab the data in time. Second, if they have failed and you can't get the data anymore, data recovery by professionals is, while being expensive, possible - no matter what part of the hard disk failed.

Take an SSD instead: can just freeze your data or completely fail from one second to another with data recovery being nearly impossible due to the absence of any relation between logical and physical mapping. You can dump the flash memory, but that's not like an image of a hard disk - it's a jigsaw puzzle with millions of pieces that you need to solve. There are many articles about the challenges of doing data recovery from SSDs you might want to read.

darry wrote on 2020-04-19, 00:17:

And please, as mentioned before in this thread and others, consider

a) using RAID 1 or 6 (5 is not recommended on "large" capacity drives, starting at 4TB or so) on your NAS

It's a 1-slot NAS, so with that NAS, RAID is out of question. Cloud-sync or replication to an external USB hard disk should be possible, however.

derSammler wrote on 2020-04-19, 08:22:

Why that emphasis on "mechanical disk drive"?

I also own many old drives that pre-date most of my USB drives and still work 100% perfectly.

What I meant to say is that you shouldn't trust an old hard drive to the point that you could say "it will never fail" or someting like that. You should always have in mind that very small possibility of head crash or data corruption due to bad sectors.

I didn't mean to say that you should throw it away after the warranty is expired, I'm not that scared of them 😜 . Just to keep in mind that, one day, it has the right to let you down, like in the author's case (its why backup is so important).

I agree on the SSD side, they can be even more dangerous as they wear out. But the thread was about HDDs, that's why I didn't mention them.

derSammler wrote on 2020-04-19, 08:22:

It's a 1-slot NAS, so with that NAS, RAID is out of question. Cloud-sync or replication to an external USB hard disk should be possible, however.

There are single drive and multi-drive WD My Cloud units, as the exact model was not specified, I assumed multi-drive. Then again, re-reading the first post that mentions only one drive, it indeed seems to be a single drive unit (maybe all 2010 WD My Cloud units were single drive, I couldn't find a complete model history) .

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-18, 19:07:

It's NOT a standard harddrive but a special one for this WD Mycloud. It has a special PCB that is also part of the Network interface.

If that is the case, the NAS will need to be replaced anyway, so might as well get a multi-drive replacement unit that allows for drive swapping and at least RAID1 .
This really makes me curious; I would really like to know the exact model of this NAS that uses a proprietary drive .

darry wrote on 2020-04-19, 13:04:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-18, 19:07:

It's NOT a standard harddrive but a special one for this WD Mycloud. It has a special PCB that is also part of the Network interface.

If that is the case, the NAS will need to be replaced anyway, so might as well get a multi-drive replacement unit that allows for drive swapping and at least RAID1 .
This really makes me curious; I would really like to know the exact model of this NAS that uses a proprietary drive .

Yes, I tried to mount this drive in a Linux computer but could not get it it mount. The computer wanted to reformat it.
Which I didn’t.
I later read that this drive has some sort of security built in which does not allow anyone to use it without the WD MyCloud enclosure.
You need that Networking PCB in order to get it to work.

This is the First Gen MyCloud with the WD Green drives. ( Black enclosure MyCloud )

But the Newer MyCloud NAS drives have a WD RED drive and you can mount them in a Linux computer if the Networking PCB fails.
I have successfully done this.
Using a Harddrive USB dock.
These are the Newer White enclosure MyCloud NAS drives.

Here are some photos.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-04-19, 15:17:

Yes, I tried to mount this drive in a Linux computer but could not get it it mount. The computer wanted to reformat it. Which I […]
Show full quote

Yes, I tried to mount this drive in a Linux computer but could not get it it mount. The computer wanted to reformat it.
Which I didn’t.
I later read that this drive has some sort of security built in which does not allow anyone to use it without the WD MyCloud enclosure.
You need that Networking PCB in order to get it to work.

The reason for that is probably that this version of the NAS uses encryption, so its drives won't be readable on a computer, but they are probably standard drives that could used on any PC once re-formated . Conversely, you can probably use standard drives in the NAS (said NAS will just format and encrypt them ) .