Removing a hard drive from an external " WD my passport essential"

danniemcq · 29-02-2012 09:12AM #1

So my mate dropped his and long story short it isn't working. He is on about sending it away to get fixed but i was thinking surely opening it you would find a hard drive that might just fit in a caddy.

After the bang i wouldn't trust it to work 100% again (hell i only trust new hard drive 99% of the time!) and he wants photos off it.

Has anyone done something similer before or does anyone know anything about the internal workings?

had a look online and found this
http://www.avforums.com/forums/hard-disk-drives-solid-state-drives/1092720-removing-hard-drive-western-digital-my-passport-essential-se-1tb-2-5-a.html
but there are a few different reports (and its from 09)

Hard drive details here http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?modelno=WDBACY5000ABK-EESN&x=10&y=6

cheers

Torqay · 29-02-2012 12:22PM

danniemcq wrote: »

you would find a hard drive that might just fit in a caddy.

You'll probably need a replacement drive from WD, they're using circuit boards with non-standard connectors.

LoGiE · 29-02-2012 01:51PM

It's just a regular laptop drive, i have one myself. There are plenty of videos on the web that show you how to replace the drive inside with a new/bigger model. If the SATA - USB board is damaged thats a different story obviously.

Voodu Child · 29-02-2012 02:26PM

When a HDD drops and stops working, 99.99% of the time the drive itself is broken. Not the enclosure.

That's just the unfortunate reality of it.

Also note that most recent WD external drives are unreadable from anything other than the original enclosure. Anything advertised with hardware encrpytion feature. The encryption is applied to all data at the controller level whether you 'enable' it or not.

Removing a hard drive from an external " WD my passport essential"

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