There are many people out there who thought what they could recover the data by themselves, only to swallow a bitter pill later, that's why.
Because if you really need the data then you go to people who makes a living by recovering data.
But if you are okay to lose the if unsuccessful then it's okay to try, but you should know/tell that beforehand.
Reading through the other comments - you have a very low chance to succeed, because if you want to swap controller boards then you need to move adaptive data too, as other had said.
But I'm curios what exactly happened, WD Green from 2012 are not the worst drives out there. How exactly they failed, what happens now when you power them on, with SATA connected, without? Did you try external USB2SATA converters/boxes?
>"Reading through the other comments - you have a very low chance to succeed, because if you want to swap controller boards then you need to move adaptive data too, as other had said."
I'm pretty decent with soldering iron and hot-air gun. Migrating the SMD flash/EEPROM chip shouldn't be too hard.
>"But I'm curios what exactly happened, WD Green from 2012 are not the worst drives out there. How exactly they failed, what happens now when you power them on, with SATA connected, without? Did you try external USB2SATA converters/boxes?"
The discs spin up but the controller no longer communicates with the host. The computer doesn't see that the drives are attached to the SATA bus. There were no signs of problems coming, they just suddenly stopped working from one power-up to the next. I tried with different motherboards and a couple of SATA-USB bridges, all same result.
> Migrating the SMD flash/EEPROM chip shouldn't be too hard.
Well, good luck then.
> The discs spin up but the controller no longer communicates with the host
Now this is strange, if the controller would be dead then there would be no spin-up. If you hear the heads working than the controller is definitely not dead.
You tried to search forums dedicated to data recovery with your exact P/N?
No discernable sound of the heads moving. Drive just spins up and that's it. Last I searched was back in 2012-2013 and I didn't find any other advice than trying a PCB swap.
Because if you really need the data then you go to people who makes a living by recovering data.
But if you are okay to lose the if unsuccessful then it's okay to try, but you should know/tell that beforehand.
Reading through the other comments - you have a very low chance to succeed, because if you want to swap controller boards then you need to move adaptive data too, as other had said.
But I'm curios what exactly happened, WD Green from 2012 are not the worst drives out there. How exactly they failed, what happens now when you power them on, with SATA connected, without? Did you try external USB2SATA converters/boxes?