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
In many cases, all you need to do is connect the drive to a computer using a new dock and your data is immediately available. If it’s not, here are some suggestions:
- Test the drive using the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool
- Use data recovery software:
- Use TestDisk to repair damaged partition tables.
- Purchase the Runtime.org GetDataBack data recovery software (free demo available)
- If you’re a Linux guru and have an empty spare drive on which to copy data, you can try using the SystemRescue bootable Linux CD and Antonio Diaz’s ddrescue command line program.
- Send the drive a professional data recovery specialist, such as DTI.
Video showing How to Opening the Case
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. If your hard drive fails, or in case of a catastrophic event (fire, theft), there is still a secure copy of your data. I’ve had great experiences with CrashPlan.com Offsite Backup, which allows you to backup files between your own computers for free, and gives unlimited unlimited offsite storage on their servers for $3.00/Month.
To Install a Different SATA Drive in the Original Western Digital Enclosure:
In many cases, the enclosure is probably what is failed. But if you’re sure it,s 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.
vaaaaaaaay mersssiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii :*
Thanks for getting me started. What a pain that was!
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I love you!!!!!!!!! I was 10 seconds away from taking a hammer to my WD MyBook, but then I came across this tutorial. So glad this ordeal is over. SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!
Very Helpful Tutorial! Thank you
Thanks for the article… was VERY helpful!
Hi, I have a WD external 1T Book Elite. Couple of days ago, I needed a file from it, after using it, I didnt remove it from my pc, I just turned off my pc normally and went for a nap. After napping I turned my pc on and found out I couldnt access my WD any more. From “my computer”, I can see that my pc can see the WD, but can’t read it normally. As I clicked to the WD, it asked me to “format” the disk. I didn’t format it because I know it would destroy all of my 500Gb data.
Also from “my computer”, I can see that my pc can see the WD, but when I click to “properties” it says, “free space, 0 byte; occupied space, 0 byte”. So to me, it simply means my pc cant read the WD any longer.
I brought my WD to a kinda repair shop, desperately asked them if they can save my data? My WD has no physical damage, neither ‘formatting damage’. They said they can save 100% of my data, but the price is INSANE!!!!!
Furthermore I have private data in my WD, I dont want them to be read by shops.
I have a question for you, and you might know what I wanna hear, but please just tell me the true. My data mean everything to me. I’d pay that insane price to save my data, but hoping that my brother can help.
My question is: by any chance, the failure is caused just because “the circuit board inside the enclosure” as u said above? If so, just simply remove the case and take out the data normally by using other cables?
Please let me know. I’d ask my brother to remove the case, and have my data saved. He is an IT guy, but he lives hundreds miles away from me.
Thank you!
Akimi, I don’t think what you’ve described is a circuit board error. I think you need to recover the partition using TestDisk (or similar) as mentioned in the post.
No offense, but you don’t sound like the most technical user, and perhaps it would be safer to send the drive to your brother to run the recovery software.
Thank you, Carton. I’ll bring it to him. Must find time though, can’t go to him right now.
No, I’m not a technical user. I don’t dare to remove the case myself anyway.
Also the shop told me, it would take them daysss to recovery the data. If what they said is true?
Once again, thank you!
Hi Calton, you were right. We used File Scavenger to get the data back. Thank you.
Glad you were able to solve your problem and recover your data!
Yes, my 2 TB WD Driveas hardly been used, the blue light comes on and you can hear it running but it has dissapeared from my pc it is only just a few days over 12 months old, but it has lots of personal things on it, what am i to do.
regards Colin
Hi, would trying to attach the drive to a separate sata connector delete my data? I read something about the controller being built into the chipset on the case? in which case it’s what keeps track of what data is where? thanks
ipad 3 pris…
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Thank you so much for this article. It saved me from thinking the hard drive was fried with a resulting loss of data. I took the drive out (in this case a WD green 1TB), installed it in my computer as an internal SATA drive, and the drive was fine! All data intact. As you stated, the controller card was indeed the likely culprit. Too bad, I really like the “My Book” external drive enclosures.
I had to remove my Western Digital 3 terabyte drive but now my windows7 says that disc needs to be initialized i have data on there that I need is there any way to get it off
Sounds like the drive is encrypted. You need to install it in another Western Digital enclosure.