This western digital elements came in clicking, lets have a closer look, its going to need opened up and the heads replaced. I need to take it into the cleanroom but first I need to find compatible parts.

Case part number WDBAAU0020HBK-01 Drive ID = WD20EARX-00PASB0

I have a crazy amount of spare parts, I need to have multiple versions of each drive in order to use for parts.

Found a nice donor drive for recovery on this wd20earx-00PASB0 (sadle G6)

The 2 drives sitting side by side waiting to get taken apart , note the matching details

I actually enjoy data recovery on western digital drives.

Here I am examining the heads on the faulty western digital elements drive, heads 2 and 3 are bad but to the naked eye they look fine. However we need to swap with good parts in order to achieve a professional data recovery

Both heads removed from donor and client 2TB western digital drives

This innocent looking chip (initio 1607P) encryption chip actually encrypts the data, most IT guys throw this part away. You actually need it, well most people do. Real Data recovery guys have special tricks to get past this issue. ;)

Here we can see that the procedure went perfect and all is left is to extract the customer data and give them the good news

When I see green Im happy. Green in data recovery speak is goooood! :) NEXT!!!!