A Spot Of "BOVVER"!! - Hard Drive Problem

[ameerat42]

Yes, it involves NOT being able to retrieve data

A goodly slab of my latest pics BEFORE they were backed up

The "first drive I use to download pics" was fine when I shut down 2 nights ago.
The next morning IT wouldn't show up on my computer. The light flashes and the
drive spins... - That's about all.

It's a WD 1TB Passport USB3 exrternal drive. So I pulled it apart (ie, out of its case) and had a
good squiz at the PCB. There are pics below, but I want to ask a specific question first:

Would it work (like it used to years ago) to swap the CB from an identical drive so that I
could get the data off this one? Has anyone tried it for these (modern) drives?

For electronics experts, do you think the part of the PCB that looks like little barcodes is
crook? There seem to be "breaks in the metal".

Any other advice would be welcome too. (But spare me the castigation, as I've already done that quite well)

Here are the pics...
1) the whole PCB

SDIM8412aclr.jpg


2) The "barcode-lookig bit"
SDIM8412ac2.jpg