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.
Great HowTo,
Thank you very much!
Just wanted to say thanks for the excellent write-up!!
Instructions are pretty good. Thanks.
Only problem I had was that I needed to flex the sides open real wide (to the point I thought they might break) in order to get to hooks at the top front of the case to release. This is with a My Book Home Edition 500GB. The inner shell of the case would not simply slide backwards after I used the credit cards. These hooks were holding it in place.
make sure the hooks are off the clamp.That’s the whole point of using the screw drivers. Try a plastic spatula or something similar if u can.
Don’t press it too hard. easy does it. els u’ll end up with the hooks on the table…cheers
Wonderful instructions, thanks.
I have 2 1Tb My Books (USB) and a white 1Tb WD drive connected in my network (World Book?). Can I fit any SATA 1.5 or 2Tb drive inside these? I noted the comment above regarding jumpering to reset the board.
Theoretically, yes, any SATA drive should work.
I’m having trouble removing the pads. Is there any easy way to do this, or do you just have to keep trying to get them out?
Nevermind the pads thing. I’m pushing quite hard on the tabs, but they don’t appear to be moving very much, if at all. Is there some angle or something that I should use? Thanks!!
Nevermind the above…I got the tabs down, but it’s not budging, even a tiny bit when I try to slide the case out.
Thanks so much for the guide, it was a huge help. If it wasn’t for the step-by-step, I would have gotten the hammer and beat it to smitherines.
Hi there, and thanks to Carlton for this useful howto!
Some days ago i guessed my MyBook Studio internal HD (1TB) was dead, so I successfully disassembled the enclosure using the informations provided in this howto in order to replace it.
My intention is to replace it with an exactly identical drive, so I already bought online a new Caviar GP 1TB, and I’m waiting it to be delivered.
While waiting for the new Caviar Green, I tried to use the enclosure with a generic hard drive, but it didn’t work.
I read the paragraph about installing a generic SATA drive, so I tried to reset the board but, maybe because I’m not so good with jumpers and similar stuff, maybe because my board is a bit different, I never got it to work with generic drives.
The howto says:
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), sticking out of the circuit board, near the DC power input.
By shorting those jumpers 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.
So I expected to disconnect the HD and power cord, find the 2 metal prongs labeled with “J6” near the DC IN, touch both with a metal screwdriver, re-assemble everything and have the enclosure working with the new “generic” hd.
Instead, I found the J6 label and the 2 metal prongs, and it’s not so close to the DC input, but.. the bigger surprise is that there is already a shunt (identical to those found in hard drives) connecting the 2 prongs near the J6 label..
so I come back here and read all the comments, and found the comment by Taher about the jumper being labeled as J9 in his board, so started searching for a J9 label on my board; I found it, and it’s very close to the DC IN, so maybe I have J9 instead of J6 ?
Now I’m wondering: where should I touch with my screwdriver ? Remember, I said I’m not good with this stuff some lines upper =)
I uploaded some pics of my board on imageshack, can someone explane exactly where should I touch with the screwdriver to reset the board ?
J6:
http://img44.imageshack.us/i/87122245.jpg/
J9:
http://img44.imageshack.us/i/72604808.jpg/
“global” view:
http://img41.imageshack.us/i/globalb.jpg/
http://img41.imageshack.us/i/global2a.jpg/
( Gallery link: http://img44.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=87122245.jpg )
Thanks again for help!
I never had to do anything with the jumper. If the power is disconnected, I don’t think it will hurt anything to jumper any of the pins, but I think it’s more likely that you have a bad enclosure and not a bad hard drive.
Hello again, and thanks for the quick answer!
Today I received the new Caviar bought online days ago, it’s almost identical to the original drive included with the MyBook Studio, the only difference is 32 MB cache instead of 16; I reassembled the enclosure with the new drive and it’s working perfectly, so now I’m 100% sure the only broken part was the drive!
Conclusion: I’m ok with the new drive, but I’m still wondering how to reset the board for generic drives.. other users may be interested too, so if someone successfully reset it and wants to spend 2 minutes explaining using the pics in my previous post, it would be nice =)
Thanks again to Carlton and to everyone contributing here!
hello,
thanks for the great instructions! because it was opened without the slightest problem. disk I then used as internal. Now the drive broke down too. i hate wd!! unfortunately, now I cant find a plastic box / I guess my wife threw him out/. without it the claim is probably impossible.
I thought claim by pre-mailer service, dead disk inserted into received box and send back. But I do not remember if it’s not on the factory label /otside the box/ indicated the serial number of the disk inside. can someone take pictures of the label on the box, or at least check? sorry for my bad english. thanks
Without the plastic drive enclosure, your chances of getting warranty repair are very low. You can try sending in the drive by itself, but I don’t think it has any warranty. The only way to get warranty is to install that drive back into the enclosure and send that back to WD.
thanks for your reply carlton. i know. without plastic enclosure is zero chance. but WDC offers warranty service – pre-mailer. they send in advance a new my book, and then you send a damaged item within 30 days back. I would like to use the plastic housing from the new my book, insert damaged drive inside and send it back. I will have at least a functional internal drive….. just not remember whether it is not on the housing the serial number of the disk inside. It would be a problem …
Hi there!
Thank you for the how to, it helped a lot!
According this , now I know a better way how to open it up, without any scratches or damaging the holding “pins”.
Just use the same credit cards like on the front, for the bottom sides (first open up the fronts)… and it will open up perfectly.
I´ve found this out after opening mine – damaged one of the pins so I´m screwed, no warranty anymore… but might help somebody else!
The drive inside is ok, just the power cord is DEAD and got the electronics to some deep sleep – I´ve used the J6 and placed another drive inside (Seagate) , after that verifying the board is ok, putting back the WD drive – all running like before!!!
Hello everyone: Great news!
PC Connection kindly exchanged my used-once WD 3-way 1TB MyBook for a WD Caviar SATA 1TB and now, happily using their iSTAR SATA-USB Drive Dock (3.5/2.5″). Works perfectly with drive jumper for 1.50 Gbps rate with my Intel chipset ICH5 (see Jun 20 entry above for conflict details).
They courteously acknowledged my several email xchngs w/ Intel, WD and their Tech Support to ‘make my case’ about unreported, unforewarned incompatibility. So relieved! Mailed personal thank you letter to their pres, Mrs. Patricia Gallup.
Only cost another $30 for this dock and though it’s not as ‘consumer-appliance looking’ (Westerners – are we spoiled?), still a nice design. Usefully, accomodates 2.5″ size notebook drives, as they hopefully increase in capacity.
PC Connection Item# 9179609 $27.30
iSTAR USA, Inc. Mfr# XAGE-N99-SAU
Or for their low price ext drive enclosures (aluminum)…
Macally Item# 8444407 Mfr# T-S350SU $17.74
Silver MicroPac Tech, Item# 8530882 Mfr# EC-ESTS $16.43
Have never worked for nor know anyone personally at PC Conn. Just a consumer who nearly got stuck with a SATAII-incompatbl drive, because of my reliable PC from 2005.
Thank You God! And ask His help if you get in trouble – His assurance enabled me to write a peaceful, appeal to PC Conn. Thanks Carlton for your site which helped me the most of any, in case an exchange fell thru, and ‘surgery’ needed.
Still praying for vendors to forewarn and WD to change their comm board design.
Isleton, CA
Thank you very much!!!
THANK YOU! This is excellent and with your video it took me 5 minutes to open my dead My Book Essentials.
My Book sounded very bad – clicking and restarting the drive continously. After removing the hard drive and connecting it with a USB to SATA adapter it worked! I was able to backup all data. Now lets see, what the WD warranty says to the condition of the case.
I NEED HELP. My WD Hard Drive yesterday stoped working and started blinking, but then it stoped blinking at all. So I thought to take it apart to get the hd out to connect to pc other way, but I dont have the adaptor yet as my pc is ide but drive is sata. So what I found out when taking apart the drive, that the control board works by itself, but when connect to it the hd it does not even light up. What could be wrong, can my drive be saved or is it dead for good.
You won’t know for sure until you try an SATA adapter, but your drive is probably dead and would require professional data recovery to get the data off of it.
hi mate,i’m new to this stuff so appreciate your efforts.
as i was plugging my 1TB S/N : WCAU42974707, I notice acrid smell of smoke coming from it, and now i have no power at all.
1 i think i burnt the circuit board or some other problem?
2 is it possible to connect the hard disk to my desktop if i buy this USB to SATA adapter that you mention?
3 if this solution works is it easy to install it and do i need any other parts to connect it like other wires and stuff?
4 and finally would you recommend to keep the hard disk on desktop after i recover my data, would this slow down my pc because its a big hard disk?
thank you
Thanks for this page and video. I Upgraded a working silver My Book casing from 500 Gb to 1Tb Western Digital Green Power HDD. No resets or anything required. Just a clean swap.
Thanks for the instructional, i plugged in my 1Tb one morning, it made loud popping noise and the drive wouldnt work anymore, thanks to your instructions i was able to open it, and recover all 600gb of data by plugging it into a desktop pc (as the hard drive itself wasnt damaged). its still under replacement warranty so this time, i CAN have my cake, AND eat it too :-).
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.
This is an awesome find! I contacted WD and paid the $120 for them to send me the replacement drive before I returned the old drive. I opened the new drive and took the internal power supply to swap with the old one. The drive still didn’t power up. I put the old power supply on the new drive and the new drive powered up. This tells me that the curcit board on the drive itself is bad. How do you swap that out?
You don’t swap out anything on the drive itself. If the drive is dead, your data is gone, unless you send it to a drive/data recovery company.
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.
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.