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In: Reviews
With: 41 Comments

Western Digital MyBook Elite external hard drives use hardware-based encryption chips to (optionally) encrypt drives using 256-bit encryption. This is OK for security, but horrible for data recovery.  It is impossible to access (decrypt) the drive if the enclosure circuit board fails, even if the drive itself is fine.  For this reason, I highly recommend not using the hardware-based encryption unless you have a solid off-site backup plan, such as Backblaze. What if the Enclosure Fails? If you’ve enabled the hardware-based encryption, the data on the drive is completely inaccessible without the encryption chip in the Western Digital enclosure. So a simple failure of theRead More →

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In: Tech
With: 493 Comments

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 apartRead More →