The external HDD stopped working. How to connect it to SATA and in general to a PC directly?

Question

Hard disks

I have an external HDD of the following model:

Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB

Until recently, it has been working properly for more than a year, I was satisfied. Encrypted it with BitLocker, doted on it. I moved to another city for work and took it with me just in case. Somewhere around 2 months stupidly lay in a backpack unnecessarily. When I laid down to the backpack, it was a worker. He never fell, he did not go crazy in the cold and in the heat. And one of these days I get it for work, I connect it, I look, it does not react. I think maybe something is wrong with USB. I change connectors, computers. It won't start, the light won't even come on. I listen, when connected, it starts a sluggish movement, similar to a couple of attempts to spin the disk and that's it. Further silence. I went to the store, I thought maybe the problem is in the cable. Same with the other cable. I read somewhere that you can directly connect to SATA and check if there is a problem in this board from the box. I opened the box, and there does not seem to be this SATA connector.

So, before giving it to a service for diagnostics, where they will tear off three skins from me, I would like to try all the options that do not require any special skills. I took a picture of this disk in disassembled state. Please tell me what could be the problem with the disk? And how can it be directly connected to a PC to check if it is working without a board? Maybe there are cables, adapters

Here are pictures of the disassembled disk

UPD: When you connect a disk to the phone's USB OTG, it reacts like this:

Is this normal behavior?

https://youtu.be/CEHXShn_Dcg

Answer 1

how can it be directly connected to a PC to check if it is working without a board?

I already answered a similar question here . I will repeat briefly - if the part responsible for SATA is dead, then nothing can be done. But if the SATA <-> USB converter is faulty, then you can. To do this, you need to find 5 points on the controller board: +Rx, -Rx, +Tx, -Tx and a common minus, and wire these pins to a regular SATA connector in accordance with its pinout. Finding these points is not so difficult (see the photo at my link), since the SATA lines have a characteristic recognizable look. After looking at your photo of the controller board, I already found them.

Answer 2

how can it be directly connected to a PC to check if it is working without a board?

You have two options:

1. "Adapt" a board from the same SATA disk (internal) to your "bank";
   
2. Solder to the desired conclusions on the existing board, if it is alive, or replace it and do the same on a live one.

The first for a beginner and home conditions is difficult. For the second, we don’t have a guide specifically for Toshiba, but here is an example of replacing a USB board with SATA for a Samsung hard drive , but here is a conversion of a USB board into SATA for a WD drive . Option c VD is quite hardcore, they don’t even give a soldering iron to a specialist :)

Maybe there are cables, adapters

The adapter will not work for you, the "adapter" (bridge) you had on the USB. And now you just need to get a direct connection via SATA.

before giving it to the service for diagnostics, where three skins will be torn off me

What is your task? Get a working disk (a guarantee is best here, but can be tricky after opening), or recover information from it?
If the latter, then in normal data recovery companies, diagnostics are free. Moreover, judging by your description, now the price of restoration with a high probability will be quite acceptable.
The main thing - do not finish the disk yourself and do not go to different "service centers", "laptop repairs" and similar places. You need a data recovery firm and nothing else. A brief universal memo for choosing is here: https://data-recovery.rf/