How to Shuck/Open WD MyBook/EasyStore/Elements External Hard Drives
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- Опубліковано 6 лип 2024
- In this video, I show you how to remove the 3.5" SATA hard drive used inside WD MyBook, EasyStore and Elements series external hard drives.
These "external" hard drives are really just standard 3.5" desktop hard drives that are attached to USB to SATA adapters and get their power from an external adapter. They can be removed for use in a regular desktop, NAS or home server.
This is useful for a few things:
- If external drives stop working, it's generally the converter PCB that stops working. If you have an issue with a drive not showing up, but the drive sounds fine, this is a simple (and free) way to be able to recover your data provided you have another SATA interface. This was why I first opened up one of these drives.
- External drives are generally cheaper then internal, especially on sales. It can be cost-effective to buy external hard drives to just remove the drive inside. My current desktop drive used this technique. Quite interesting given that in the past, sometimes it was cheaper to buy internal drives, and buy an enclosure if you wanted to use it as an external drive.
Note: Taking apart a drive may void your warranty. If it's a new drive you want to turn into an internal, make sure you test it first, before doing this!
You should probably use plastic tools if you're doing this to a new drive. The drive I'm using is long out of warranty.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:28 - What is shucking? Why extract the drive?
00:38 - WD 3.3v pin 13 issue
(skip here if you want to skip the intro)
01:02 - Taking apart the sides
02:45 - Taking out the drive
04:03 - Note on the PCB
04:21 - Finishing touches
(skip this part if you're in a rush)
05:41 - External SATA hot-swap dock demo
06:13 - Conclusion
Note: Some WD external hard drives with WD white label drives use the SATA 3.3 spec, commonly known as the 'pin 13 issue' or '3.3v issue'. On these drives, the 3.3v SATA line is used to signal the drive to sleep. On desktop computers, you can either tape over pin 13 on the SATA POWER cable, remove the pin, cut the 3.3v cable, or use a Molex to SATA (lose all your data) adapter since Molex does not have 3.3v on the line.
See / created_an_alternate_g... and / i_shucked_two_wd_my_bo... as a starter.
Apologies if there are any artifacts in the video, it was interpolated from my 60i camera to 30p to 60p through a couple filters using ffmpeg. See my ffmpeg scripts page on my website for info. Same thing if there's audio/video mismatch, since I use 2 separate recorders and sync in post.
Watch this video on Peertube: peertube.tonytascioglu.com
More info is probably on my wiki: wiki.tonytascioglu.com
Copyright 2021 - Tony Tascioglu
I'm making this freely available under a CC-BY-SA-NC license on Peertube.
I hope you enjoyed the video and learned something!
Corrections/Errata:
(will be updated as suggestions come in) - Наука та технологія
I've had a 4TB EasyStore drive for a few years that never leaves the desk and I've been sick of needed a power brick for it. Thanks to this vid I've popped the drive out and it's going straight into the tower. Thanks!
This is not how you open this drive, unless you don’t want to close it again. Your method destroys the little plastic clips. The cover can slide off, you just need to pry it in the proper locations. If you imagine the drive as a book, with the spine of the book being the side that says Western Digital, you simply pry between the spine and the cover. The cover should slide off away from the back side with the ports.
You're absolutely correct @fedelish
Thank you so much! Saved me! xo
Thank you so much!!!
How does the blue chip connect to the green chip besides the screw.
I followed this video to get hard drive out when the power surge fried the box. I can vouch for this video. Thanks!
Next step now is to recover the data that is no longer accessible due to the power surge.
Glad I could help. Hopefully the data on your drive is still intact!
@@TonyTascioglu Within that week I used getdataback recovery program and managed to recover most of the data from it. Used a friend's key to get the full version to do so.
All good and I've thrown out the plastic casing to the recovery.
Thanks a lot for the video that started all this.
Good details - mentioning the firmware board.
thank you!
the clear piece of plastic is a light guide for the drive in use indicator.
I hope you still read your comments. Mine had a power spike. I did everything on your tutorial. Will it still function on the data mount?
I do still read them! It's just been a hectic time since I was finishing my last semester and am in the middle of a move.
If you had a power surge, it's a game of luck. If the power supply and sata adapter board took the damage and left the drive untouched, it should mount.
If the surge made it past the power supply, the sata board, and into the drive, you may be looking at professional data recovery unfortunately.
Hey, I have a 4TB WD My Book and when I extract the disk from the enclosure and connect it direct to the sata and power in my pc I cant access the drive but i see him.
This external dock will bay pass the pcb in the enclosure and I would be able to access the files in the disk?
I'm not quite sure I understand what you're referring to, but if the drive shows up but throws IO errors, that could be something wrong with the drive. See if you can get SMART readings with a tool like `smartmontools` on Linux or crystaldiskinfo on Windows. Some WD drives need the 3.3V pin taped over to work when not in the enclosure - if it's a "WD White" drive generally.
Nice! now, I can hopefully recover my data...I don't really care about the case...knowing it's the usual sata hard drive in there...I'm happy to do the rest. thanks.
✌
Literally why I had to this the first time... Stopped showing up on my computer, turns out, the SATA drive in it was just fine and is still running (it's the one I used to demo in this video!) but it was just the USB+Power to SATA board that was malfunctioning. Not the first I've seen either, I guess they just aren't that robust.
Thanks, Tony. I was able to recover my files. It's a shame they don't make the power supply components durable. Lessons learned. Thanks again.
Thx!
Gracias por el contenido, me ayudo
Like + sub
4th time i'm doing this in 15 years, 4th time i'm breaking the inner plastic brackets even with a tuto... :p thanks though
If I forgot my password, will this method work to retrieve my files?
Depends what password you mean. If full disk encryption like LUKS or Bitlocker, removing the disk will have no effect
If files are owned by your user and you forgot the password on the laptop - probably.
Wow wd drm for harddrives. That's cold. I'm guessing that stops people from taking out the hard drive, then throwing in a cheap one and ask for a refund at the store while keeping the good drive. Or swap for lower TB drive in and keeping the higher and refund. Also hope the store doesn't check.
2:08
should have used the hdd where you don't need to take both sides off to open it. less prying/breaking
I will never again buy WD MyBook. Two of mine stopped working. So far no problems with Seagate. But the best solution is the docking station. I’ll try to remove my two WD HDDs from their enclosures and hope the drives do actually still work.
No kidding, and even when you retrieve the drive and put it in a new enclosure, they seem to be hopelessly corrupted.
@@j.p.9522 We had a language training center at the WDD manufacturing plant here in Thailand. Having dealt with the staff, I’m not surprised anymore why WDD’s quality has gone downhill.
The docking station has been a lifesaver for multiple drives for me as well.
One advantage WD externals have over Seagate is for their 8TB drives: Seagate 2-8TB are all SMR, for WD, only 2-6 are SMR, with the 8's remaining CMR drives.
@@TonyTascioglu Oh, I’m starting to feel old and out of date. Have to google the terms SMR, CMR.
I can only say that the WD drives are a noticeably fatter/higher than the Seagate drives.
All mine are 2-3TB range. I will eventually buy 3x 12TB and consolidate many small drives onto 3 large ones. (Or maybe wait for 18TB to be available at a reasonable price.)
did it work? mine still works in its case but sluggish, pc struggles at times to reconcile it and not all folders are accessible causing a crash. i hope connecting it directly to the pc i will be able to retrieve all files. though to be fair it is 13 years old now and had left it in the draw unused for at least 5 years.
Might as well just take a hatchet and hack the plastic shell off, it's no different from destroying the tabs that hold the cover to case...
I cringed watching you open that case.
Pretty sure if your shucking a drive your not gonna put it back in the enclosure. So there is that.