I recently needed to removed the drive from a Western Digital My Book External USB/eSATA drive enclosure. Unfortunately, this wasn't an obvious process and this excellent article by Scott Cramer didn't apply to the newer version (1 TB drive) enclosure I have. So here you go, the steps required to disassemble a new-style Western Digital My Book drive enclosure.
1. Locate the two rubber pads on the bottom of the enclosure near the front, curved surface. Remove these two pads. Depress the two tabs below using a small flat-head screwdriver.
1a. With a couple of credit cards, pry the back edge of the casing apart and hold them open with the credit cards. There are some locking mechanisms there that need to be held apart. You can now slide the plastic casings apart. Note that it is easier to lift the round corners of the case and pop it out of the retainers than it is to slide it off due to the very tight fit of the sliding components.
2. Slide the clear plastic LED front panel conduit forward and remove.
3. Rotate the hard drive/carrier assembly sideways and then lift away from the case
4. Remove the two screws holding the metal connector casing. Slide it upwards and remove it
5. Slide the circuit board upwards (away from the drive), just like you did for the metal casing.
6. Remove the 4 screws holding the hard drive to the metal carrier. You'll see that it is a standard 3.5" desktop SATA drive.
You're done!
Repeat the steps in reverse order to re-assemble the enclosure.
Getting Your Data Off of the Drive
In most cases, the circuit board inside the enclosure is the cause of the failure and the drive itself is fine. The drive is a standard 3.5-inch SATA drive and easiest way to get your data off is to use a SATA-to-USB adapter dock, such as this Thermaltake Dock at Amazon.com.
Thermaltake BlacX eSATA USB Docking Station
To Install a Different SATA Drive in the Enclosure:
In most cases, the enclosure is probably what is failed. But if you're sure it is working, you can replace the original drive with a different drive. For example, I replaced the 1TB drive with a 200GB drive. I didn't have to do anything special, I just put the new drive in the enclosure, plugged everything in, and it worked.
However, a few people have had with the enclosure recognizing the new drive. If you do, try this:
(thanks Fisslefink) The onboard chipset memory of the MyBook Studio needed to be reset. When you remove the metal shielding, you see the circuit board and all of the different components. One of them is two metal prongs, an empty jumper (J6, may be different on your board), sticking out of the circuit board, near the DC power input. By shorting those jumper pins together with a metal screwdriver for 2 seconds (with the drive OFF and the power cord REMOVED!), the board will reset so it can recognize the new drive.
For what it's worth, if your drive supports slower SATA operation, you can use a traditional jumper shunt (those darn little black things that get lost all the time!) to connect the jumpers at OPT1 on the 250GB drive itself. This switches it from the faster "SATA 2" 3.0GB/s transfer rate to the slower 1.5GB/s rate, with which the enclosure chipset may be more compatible.
Protect your data with offsite backups:
If you are looking for an even more robust backup solution, I highly recommend using an online backup service. So if your external drive fail, or in case of a catastrophic event (fire, theft), there is still a secure copy of your data. I've had great experiences with Mozy Unlimited Online (offsite) Backup, which give unlimited storage for $4.95/Month.
HI,
I have the 500gig mybook pro. stopped mounting on my G5 mac. I need to retrieve what was on my backup, and am nervous about taking it out of the case, and putting it in the mac internally. What would you suggest as the safest thing to try first. It's not the power, I tried both firewire & usb. It will power up, spin, it shows in disc utility, just won't mount.
You have nothing to lose by remove it from the case and attaching it directly. You could try a disc recovery utility, but I wouldn't do that until you've ruled out a failure of the external enclosure.
I bought the Thermaltake BlacX eSATA USB Docking Station. Will be here Friday. Hope to God it works! What is the best backup external hard drive out there. I'll be getting two! It has to be MAC compatible.
The best external drive for backup is one that has 2 mirrored (i.e. RAID 1) drives inside the enclosure. So if it has two 1-terabyte drives, you only have 1 TB of storage space, but the unit keeps on working, and all data is accessible, even if one of the drives fails.
For automatic in-home backup, I use a Windows Home Server. The HP servers have software that allows them to works as MAC Time Capsules (in addition to working with Windows PCs.) Also, Windows Home Server supports redundant drives.
The best back solution is one that is automatic, and off-site (in case of a catastrophic event.) I recommend using Mozy.com for automatic offsite backup. Unlimited storage costs $60/year.
this just helped me out big time. Once I opened it (which was hard as a Mo Fo) I reseated the SATA connection and everyting fired back up. Woo Hoo! That's what I call "Data Recovery Ghetto Style".
Thanks for the tutorial.
Thanks, Carlton! Just had a WD 1TB My Book drive stop working. With your instructions and video I was able to open the drive very quickly!
Agreed with your comment that most drive failures have to do with the electronics from the USB to the drive. In a relatively 'young' drive (1-2 years old) that hasn't seen much abuse, it's usually the electronics, not physical.
If the drive stills seems dead, another trick I've used in the past is substituting the drive's circuit board. (the circuit board on the drive itself) To do this, you need another drive that is identical. You'll end up voiding the warranty for 2 disks, but sometimes the data on the disk is worth it.
Thanks Carlton..
You saved me a lot of hassle. Top stuff.
Thanks for the instructions, very helpful in a pinch!
Thanks for your instructions and very helpful video! I successfully removed the case and inserted into a Thermaltake Max 4 enclosure but the blue power light just blinks and my Macbook doesn't see the drive. I wonder if you can direct me to someone who might be able to tell me how to reset the onboard chipset memory of the new enclosure. As far as I can tell, I don't see any prongs like the ones Fisslefink noted in his suggestion.
I do think (or at least hope!) the MyBook enclosure is the problem as I lost access to it just after a power outage during which I was using the drive. I've used the drive only about 5 times in 15 months.
I will definitely be using online backup from now on!
P.S. I realize my new enclosure's onboard chipset memory probably does not need to be reset, but I'm feeling eager to regain my data, especially since I voided my replacement warranty and bought a new enclosure to try to recover the data. I don't want to give up until I know the drive is fried!
Thanks for this — my MyBook is one of this newer design, though with only a 500GB drive. The drive filled up, and I wanted to swap it. I was stumped by the case, though — it didn't even dawn on me to remove the pads, as it was clear there wasn't a screw below them.
I bought a new 1.5TB WD Green drive, connected it to the power supply/circuit board and powered it on as a test (prior to reassembling the case). The drive showed up, ready for formatting.
After putting it all back together, I'm now up and running with 3x the storage – so thanks again!
-rob.
Worked for me – thanks so much from Perth, Western Australia!!
And Happy New Year, may 2010 be everything Obama's 2009 was NOT!!
Best regards from Oz!
Thanks so much! Finally I can use my WD Drive the faster way! Keep on going
hey guys, firstly cool thread and video
ok so my problem if anyone can help is; i plugged the wrong adaptor into my book (WD500H1U) 500gb the blue light flashed for half a second then nothing…..i plugged the correct adaptor in about a minute or two later after seeing i put the wrong on in, but still nothing no lights no sounds or vibrations, its still in warrantey and WD will replace the drive but all the data may be lost
any body know any tricks to get it working again, or recover data without huge expence?!
(the adaptor that got plugged in for a few minutes was a 12v dc adaptor normally plugged into a live music interface..if that helps at all)
thanks in advance for any help
tom
Sounds like your enclosure is dead. Follow the instructions above to recover your data.
Thanks so much. My disk has been giving me the click of death and I am desperate to recover the data (it's my Backup disk!) and the computer would not recognise it. This was my last hope.
Very nice website design by the way
Thanks for the tip! I did crack the hell out of those plastic clips. I bet they are are designed to break to void warranties. After I removed and reseated the drive to the sata connector the drive started working again. What the heck? Oh well. Reassemble and back in business. As a warning this drive failed after using microsoft synctoy 2.1 Coincidence? I don't think so.
Thanks for the tutorial. It was easy to find the tutorial for opening up the old one, but real difficult to find one for opening the new design. So thanks a lot for making this, much obliged.
Carlton,
Thanks! Video really helped!
Do you know where I can get a spare circuit board?
My 640 GB My Book fell on the ground while the USB cable was connected. It ripped off the surface mounted mini-USB jack. I happened to have an identical sister drive which was unused and swapped out the board to get the one I had data on working again. At this point I would like to get a new circuit board and get the empty sister drive back in service. If anyone has these laying around from taking out the HD and putting it into a dedicate external enclosure with fan, I would be grateful if I could obtain one.
thanks, Joe
Thanks bro, this was a big help.
[...] drive OFF and the power cord REMOVED!), the board will reset so it can recognize the new drive. http://carltonbale.com/western-digit…ving-the-drive __________________ Using a quad core octocore with Linux is like putting a V8 on a [...]
Hi Tom – I'm wondering if you were able to recover your data? I just did pretty much the same thing to my MyBook 500GB (plugged the wrong adaptor into it), and now it won't power up. I've been looking online to see if anybody has had a similar experience and what hte outcome was. Were you able to recover the files and if so, what steps did you take? Thank you in advance
Your drive should be fine, you just need a SATA to USB adapter to read it.
anyone know how to open the 1tb my book for mac? the design is slightly different. it cut off on me while I was playing a file off the drive. now all it does is flash on all leds and my mac cant read the drive.
Please Help!
I followed the instructions above and upgraded my WD MBSE (White led – WD5000H1Q) from 500gb to 2tb (hitachi drive). But the new drive wont show up.
I have installed WD Drive Manager, WD FAT32 formater, WD Firmware upgrade and restarted my computer (xp). When I plug in the WD drive (usb), my computer does react: I get a new "HID-compatible device" in my device manager and if I launch the FAT32 formater, it does find a "WD My Book USB Device". But when I try to format it to "factory original FAT32 partition" I get the error "Drive size too small or not supported!"
The WD firmware upgrader does not seem to detect the drive at all.
I have tried shorting jumper J6 as described at the top of the page.
Any ideas?
Thanx in advance
Tommy
First of all, you need to use the Hitachi tools. The USB-to-SATA adapter won't magically make WD tools work on a Hitachi drive. The USB interface board is brand-neutral; you need to focus on the Hard Drive brand. The Western Digital USB-to-SATA adapter in the enclosure may not support 2TB drives, so you may be out of luck.
Also, I seem to remember that some new 2TB drive are using different block sizes? That may be an issue, but I can't offer any more details.
Can u provide the pic for the jumper? I am trying to upgrade the drive to 2TB. Using WD Green. Will it work?
Many thanks for ur guide. It helps preparing my HDD upgrade process.
The jumper is two short metal pins sticking straight up from the board, spaced a few millimeters from each other. But you probalby don't need to mess that.
The 2TB WD Green should work, but I'm not positive.
Wow thanks for ur fast reply. Would try to stick a 2TB in. Hope it works. Cheers.
Here is the info I was trying to find, but couldn't earlier. The newest Western Digital drives (with EARS in the model number) have 4k sector sizes instead of the normal 512 byte size. This might cause compatibility problems, or might not, but I'd recommend the EADS model instead just to be safe. Here is a full write-up:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd-4k-sector,2554.html