Recovering WD SA510 Firmware 52015100

Issue

WD SA510 defaults to having firmware version 52015100 which self-destructs itself, preventing further access to the drive and preventing updating it.

Failing Attempts

Following attempts were tried and failed

Reading the data under Linux (some partitions showed some dir others did not)
Rescuing the data using ddrescue (all kinds of errors and bad sectors showed up)
Reading the data under Windows (the drive was not identifiable)
Official upgrade through WD Dashboard utility (The tool breaks when tries to communicate with the SSD)

Diagnoses

The firmware needs to be upgraded, but the official methodology to update was not working because the firmware is failing.
I also noticed that the smartctl utility on the device worked when I left the drive for some time and tried to open it later. Suggesting that may be the freezer trick (keeping the drive in freezer for some time, in my case ~5 min) would give us some time.

Working Attempt

Following this guide of Trying to update the firmware using the Linux based Embedded Toolkit by Western Digital, here are the steps for the upgrade:

Preparation

Format a FAT32 USB stick (which we would boot from)
Download the firmware file 52046100.fluf based on the broken SA510 device
Download the embedded Linux Updater from https://wddashboarddownloads.wdc.com/wdDashboard/application/EmbeddedLinux.zip
Extract embedded-linux.zip
Copy the content inside img/to-esp to the newly formatted stick
Copy the firmware file to the newly formatted stick (next to the previously copied content)
Create an empty file named embedded-toolkit.cfg in the newly formatted stick (next to the previously copied content)

Firmware Upgrade

Frozen the drive for 5 min
Booted from the USB stick
Click select device and choose the broken SSD CAUTION to be taken for this step
- In my case, I had the device disconnected, and in the first scan I was able to locate the previously connected drive that I don't want to wipe
- Then I externally connected the drive I want to upgrade the firmware using an enclosure
- Then I chose to rescan
- Then the newly appearing drive was clearly the one I want to wipe
Enter the firmware file name in our case it's 52046100.fluf
Then start the upgrade, if it completed succussfully you would be able to capture the data from the device. In my case I kept it connected, booted from a Linux machine with the enclosure connected then I was able to copy all the data before trying to do any operation

Appendix

The firmware link was known by following those steps

Find the firmware sublink in https://wddashboarddownloads.wdc.com/wdDashboard/config/devices/lista_devices.xml
Compile the following link https://wddashboarddownloads.wdc.com/wdDashboard/firmware/WD_Blue_SA510_2.5_1000GB_SSD/52046100/device_properties.xml to get further data about the firmware
Compile this link https://wddashboarddownloads.wdc.com/wdDashboard/firmware/WD_Blue_SA510_2.5_1000GB_SSD/52046100/52046100.fluf

weshouman/README.md