I have a 500 gig Western digital MyBook external drive. One day I hooked it up to my computer and it would not power up (for the purposes of this post, the background as to why it might not boot up is irrelevant ;-)). Horror! Of course I didn’t have everything backed up - time to start saving money for a second 500 gig drive I guess. Western Digital sent me a replacement drive but told me that my data was lost unless I wanted to talk to their data recovery department and that it would most likely be costly. After reading a bit on the ‘net, common opinion was the power or USB on the MyBook was likely the cause - that these elements were not as robust as the drive itself. After a little more research and some playing I did manage to disassemble the MyBook, recover my data, and return it to Western Digital (as pristine as possible so hopefully I did not obviously void any warranties - which would be ridiculous since I just wanted *MY* data back from *THEIR* broken drive).
Here’s what I was looking for on the ‘net and did not find. Hope this helps someone else. Click any of the images for a larger image.
(1) There is a black sticker covering one screw securing the case. Remove this sticker (mine was more like black paint that chipped off) and remove this screw.
(2) On both the top and bottom of the drive there are plastic “catches” that must be pressed in to allow you to slide the outer case off the drive. See the next picture for a clear view of the “catches” with the case off. It may be tricky getting both sides pressed in at the same time to slide off the case. On my drive, I used a flat-head screwdriver to push one side in and a little to the side to lodge it just a little under the plastic case so it would stop popping back up again. Be careful not to push in too far and break the “catches” off.
(3) Slide the case off. In truth, easier said than done so don’t cuss me out when you try it. I had to use my fingernails and pry the edges of the solid black case away from the drive unit and just keep carefully working at it until I could get it to start coming apart. When you’re doing it, you’ll see what I’m talking about.
(4) Remove four screws securing the drive unit to the inner case.
(5) There is a small circuit board attached for the LED power light that you need to remove to make the drive easier to get out of the case. Remove the three screws holding it on and gently unplug it from it’s connection on the drive unit.
(6) Peel back the foil tape so that you can access the power and data connector on the drive. Unplug the connector attached to the drive. This is a SATA hard drive and can be hooked up to a desktop computer (that accepts SATA drives) or I’ve seen adaptors on the ‘net that you can plug into a SATA drive to turn it into a regular IDE drive (not exactly something most people have laying about though). I happened to have a DELL Optiplex in the office that uses SATA drives so I opened it up and hooked the second power connector coming off the main drive to my newly freed MyBook drive. I still needed a SATA cable so I “borrowed” one from another office computer to connect the drive to the motherboard. If you are unfamiliar with all this, just look at how the main drive is hooked up - it’s not rocket science.
(7) On my DELL Optiplex I had to go into setup when the computer started and enable the second SATA drive. Okay, I didn’t know to do this right off - the drive just didn’t show up and after scratching my head for a few minutes I rebooted and checked setup. After this everything showed up fine - there was ALL my pretty data. I attached my new MyBook and moved everything over. Note - over 350 gig of data takes a while to transfer.
For the curious, all pics were taken with my Verizon LG8000 cellphone and quickly edited in Photoshop.
Hi,
thanks for the detail steps & picture,
your guide is really helping me,
my WD MyBook keep diconnecting for no reason,
and i decide to take the hard drive and hook it up internally
thanks again
Thank you so much for this posting. After reading it I was *finally* able to learn how to remove the case. I tried the WD site, but to no avail. There was nothing to be found there for model #WD16001302; also, the disassembly pics they did show illustrated the models that have four-(4) screws in the case, whereas this particular model has only one, as did yours. Until I googled and found your writeup and disassembly instructions/photos, I was at a loss. After finding your article, however, I was then able to get the *!@#*.)%@$* case off! THANK YOU!!
Glad I could help! My new drive is working great but I’m sure it’s a refurb so it worries me a bit… Love to get the terabyte drive - but I can’t imagine it crashing on me. Argh.
I’m using a 500 GB WD MyBook Pro - unforunately I couldn’t find any screws to even begin this process. Do you know if there’s a way to remove the external drive’s case from this model?
Any help would be MUCH appreciated!
This is the model:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136047
Nicole Rork
nicolerork@gmail.com
I have the same problem, I have WD MyBook 500Gb Premiun and couldn’t find the holes. I dont want to void my waranty too
I figured out how to open it up. You have to pull the rubber off of it and it will slide open (with some force). I had to completely disconnect the hard drive from the external casing, but I was able to restore all of my data. I put it into my computer and connected it via SATA cable and it works great now.
God bless you , i been tryin to extract the hdd from the wd enclosure for a week , i finally figured out what wd has been doing. ide hdds are on the way out wd hdds are filled with ide cheap drives, its a marketing ploy to sell a high end product usb drive with a cheap enclosure enabled ide. i applaud their creativity.m a bit more suspicious about the quality of the internal drive . im pluckin mine and puttin it inside the puter.then for 9$ for cable power thats reliable and the old enclosure im puttin a seagate sata 500 gig drive in the firewire boxanyway thanks , and never trust anything thats ”over the counter”
Well thanks a great deal for the pictures, I finally got it apart. Mine is a little bit different from your drive though. Mine did not have the screw. I just had to push down those two pieces of plastic on the top and bottom and it slid out. Thanks!
Update - Have not heard back from the company yet. I sent in the drive on the RMA and the lengthy instructions warned about voiding the warranty if you removed the drive from the case. Officially I never *completely* removed the drive. I put it all back together so I’m not sure how they could tell anyway unless they dusted for prints (or searched for my blog oops). I even put the rubber feet they provide (that they sent with my new drive) back on the old drive to cover the now visible screw hole in the outer case. I figure when their techs take off the rubber feet, that could account for the paint/sticker over the screw coming off.
BESIDES - even if I get charged, I’ll be like, “Give me back the broken unit” and I’ll use the drive - anything else is worth it to get my data back without paying through the nose for data recovery. Grr.
Dude, that is a kickass presentation, it’s getting harder to find good free information on the net
Thanks
dude - Totally agree. I figured since I was going through it, snap a few pics and throw it up on the web. Cool that it has been helpful.
Update - Got this e-mail from Western Digital:
Dear SCOTT CRAMER, This is a confirmation that we have received your defective drive for RMA #55555555. The RMA is now closed. If you have any questions about your RMA please reply to this email. If the information is correct, please do not reply back to this email.
Hopefully I don’t get another one saying, “You opened your drive. You are teh suck. We are now billing you.” Grr. Sending it back without getting my data when it was soooooo easy would have been ridiculous.
My MyBook has the same symptoms, I’ll try opening it later today, hopefully it works! I’m glad some people had success restoring their data.
Thank you Scott and all of you so much for posting here it’s really been helpful.
I have two My Books, one is the newer triple interface (Firewire 800 etc), the other is the older double interface (USB 2.0 + Firewire). The newer one crashed, taking 500GB of data with it, and Windows was no longer able to even format the disk. Thanks to this blog, I was able to take it apart tonight and mount it in a new machine.
Since I’m somewhat of a “veteran” external drive user, having about 4 terabytes on hand, I thought I’d add my two cents to this thread.
Anytime your PC shuts down abnormally, the external drives take a beating. Of the drives that I own, every external enclosure from every vendor has failed at one time or another. One from Maxtor failed completely, rendering any drive mounted in it non-responsive, and other enclosures from a generic CompUSA enclosure, to one of my WD Books have failed in similar fashion as well. So get used to pulling the drives apart and swapping enclosures. In fact I’ve gotten so tired of the maintenance and UPS requirements for supporting all of these drives, that I just recently built an “IDE drive server” to host six of them.
So a few tips:
1) Google chkdsk and learn how to use it. (Command prompt type “chkdsk c: /r” and that will run checkdisk in repair mode on C. or any other drive you specify.) You can drop that line in a text file and rename it to “.bat” and set that batch file to run on a schedule using Windows scheduler. That way all your flakey external drives will last as long as possible.
2) If you’re going to build an “IDE drive server”, get a mother board that supports SATA and IDE both (very common now). The WD 500GB enclosures use SATA drives not IDE, but my Maxtor 500GB uses IDE. And with a basic SATA motherboard you typically can have 2 SATA and 4 IDE drives running inside one box. That’s at least 3 terabytes on hand without using Firewire and USB, for about $250 ($50 motherboard, $50 CPU, $50 case, $50 ram, $50 for fans/cables/ etc).
3) If you want me to build one for you, send me a fax or leave me a voice mail and I’ll see if I can get it done. My voice mail number is (seven zero two) nine nine five - nine three nine two. Obviously since I have a lot better things two do with my time it’s going to cost you a heck of a lot more than $250, but if someone had offered to build this server for ME last week I would have taken them up on it at almost any price.
Back to being “on topic”, for owners of the newer 500 GB My Books, to take yours apart, follow the steps in the guide above, except instead of a screw:
1) First remove the rubber border.
2) Second, after you release the “clips” as specified in the guide, pry open the “middle” of the case (where the cables plug in). On both sides, you’ll see plastic brackets holding it closed. I inadvertently snapped mine off, but it’s no worse for wear. Once you get the middle pried open a little, you can start to slowly wiggle/yank/pull the casing away.
3) After that, it’s everything as described in the guide.
Good luck. And thank you all SOOOO much for this thread.
P.S. My spellchecker keeps asking me to retype “SATA” as “SATAN”. hmmmmm
The usb connection on my drive failed, and your guide was quite helpful taking that beast of a case apart.
Thanks!
Thanks for the writeup - I just got one of these, and was intending to use it internally (it’s cheaper than buying it bare! :-/). I couldn’t figure out how to get it open without destroying the case, and I’m usually pretty good at this stuff…
Anyway, much help, thanks!
-Dan
Dan - Hmm… never thought of checking the price on external vs. internal. You’d think an external would be cheaper all the time. Will have to pay more attention. Only downside I can think of is not knowing the brand of drive inside so not being able to do any research on it and really do a good price comparison.
thanks for the tips. i had the exact same problem with my 250gb drive. I retrieved all my data yesterday. unfortunately those little clips are pretty beat up and i definitely voided my warranty. but i’d rather have my files back than getting another drive that’s going to fail again.
in doing some searching, I found this product that may be of use to people without access to the inside of a system or no SATA cables…
it’s a USB to SATA IDE 2.5-in, 3.5in adapter.
http://tekgems.com/Products/kl-usb-sata-ide-25-35.htm
Scott,
Thanks so much for posting this guide! \
My MyBook Pro is only a couple of months old. In fact I have two - the older one still works perfectly. This newer one has always been “slower” and has been getting worse for the past few weeks. Today it totally crapped out. It’s still recognized by XP and button manager. And I can still look around the drive, but it takes ages, and file transfers simply time out with “I/O errors.”
I think (and am praying) that it was the I/O board that went bad, and the actual HD is OK.
My 500GB Pro model was slightly different than the one pictured - it’s silver colored, there is rubber around the edges (easy to pry off) and no screw, but after playing around with a simple butter knife, I was finally able to get the case open. No damage done at all. Yay.
I’ve been up all night in shock and dismay over this drive going bad on me. I have a TON of data on it, and I’m hoping to complete the process later after I get some sleep.
If all goes well, I hope to recover my important files, and to reassemble the drive - WD owes me a damn replacement!!! All of us!!!
I will post again if I get my data back. (Otherwise, I may be too depressed to even type…)
Success!!! The hard part was getting the HD out of the encosure.
The HD is now hooked up internally via SATA and is working fine. All my files are there. Phew.
So basically the enclosure PCB is some cheap crap that goes bad easily? What a shame.
Question - will WD send me a new MyBook now? If not I’ll just keep this drive as an internal SATA. And I will NEVER buy WD again. I’ve only had 2 HD’s have issues in my life so far - and both were WD (this one, and another one maybe 12 years ago). My Seagates and Maxtors have always been reliable.
Everyone - Thanks for all the useful information! I’m very grateful to the internet community for conversations *just* like this.
Paul - After you get all of your data, see if you can put the drive back together as pristine as possible. I did that with mine and sent it back in for replacement and received my replacement drive. I think it depends on how bad condition the drive looks when they get it. My guess is it’s a bunch of techs who have to take it apart anyway and they don’t really care so long as it’s not SO obvious that they can’t ignore that the warranty was voided.
Of course, to get the return, you’ll have to call WD and get an RMA (return merchandise authorization, I believe). I told them that my drive just stopped and they put me through some lame steps to troubleshoot which I just went along with and said I tried “all that”. I got my RMA. If when they get the drive, they turn you down, I’m betting all you will be out is the shipping to them and then the shipping to get the “broken” drive back. Still cheaper than buying a new SATA internal drive. Just my two cents.
Good luck! Thanks for the comments and update!
Nils - Muchos! I’m picking up one of those cables this week (on the company dollar) to keep in the “standard tool set” at the office. Maybe two… one for an offsite backup.
Update: I spoke too soon…
Turns out the HD _is_ corrupted. But at least I can see the contents now, and some files are definitely OK. Some are not. I will try to recover what I can.
I don’t know if the FAT is messed up or what. I used to be somewhat knowledgeable years ago, but I’m not too techie these days.
Any recommended software for such a task?
Update 2: These MyBooks really suck!
I discovered just now that my other MyBook has a corrupted autorun folder, and am now error-checking it.
I wonder if using Firewire has anything to do with this?
(Meanwhile, my 2 year old Seagate USB external is still working fine.)
QUESTION: what is a reliable, cost effective way to backup massive amounts of personal data? I’m pretty broke at the moment, unfortunately.
Nils - I ordered one of those cables. Will try it out when it comes in and post something here. Thanks again for the link… I wouldn’t have even thought of looking for that anywhere!
Thank you sooo much for these pics and guide. You have no idea how much you have helped me. The internet is a wonderful place!
Will Someone please YouTube a video?
I have the My Book Premium 250GB I don’t see the bottom clip. My drive clicks 3-4 times, and doesn’t show up in My Computer, but shows up in Device Manager. Anyways. thats how I ended up here.
Thanks, Loved the article.
For those who do not find a screw on the outside of the case in order to get started, apparently later versions use snap-on cases. The trick is to pry with your finger tips to see what part of the case lip (the end with the connectors) opens the easiest.
Then with a plastic knife or other similar device, stick it between the opening and run it along the until you feel resistance (you are hitting a tab). Pull out just a bit and then push down and then continue running along the length all the way around the unit.
When you get to the top and bottom ends of the metal there is a pair of plastic push-in tabs about an inch from the button end of the case. Push these in slight and the case pops off.
Unfortunately I snapped a couple of the little plastic clips that hold it together, but nothing that prevents the unit from going back together (but would likely void the warrany.. so beware and be careful.
UPDATE:
I almost forgot to come back here and report my outcome.
Well it’s good news. I very successfully reassembled my drive after recovering ALL of my files from it (!!!). WD sent me a replacement, and they received my old drive and it was accepted. Case closed.
Thanks again to Scott for starting this very helpful discussion.
Thanks for the post. I have two My Book Essential drives and have not been happy with their performance. I think they put really cheap chipsets in. I have been looking for how to do this for a couple of weeks. I even sent an email to WD tech support asking how to remove the drive - no answer - big surprise!
I am purchasing a newer tech enclosure that is also a firewire and USB 2.0 hub.
Thanks again! You did a real service to all of WD’s lost customers.
Great article re: opening the WD “My Book”. Mine is 2 months old and died. This is the only site I found that had good up to date info.
Same problem for me, my XP finds the drive when hot swapped via USB, but does not mount the drive, or identify it as anything other than a WD hard drive. So, I freed my 500GB drive from its MyBook casing and purchased a SATA controller. After getting it all hooked up, the SATA BIOS found the drive at ‘1′, but gives “0 MB’. Am I doing something wrong?
Also, if this tact doesn’t work, does anybody have any reviews for SpinRite, which looks to be my last chance at recovery before taking this to GeekSquad or someone.
Thanks in advance — Wes
Thanks so much for taking the time and effort to share your knowledge about MyBook case removal. Mine is giving the (apparently common?) symptom of 4 clicks, USB announcement but no useable device, then nothing); is out of warranty; and I just want to take a (probably long) shot at salvaging the data. I was afraid I was going to have to resort to brute force to open the case I know I’m not out of the woods , but at least I’m no longer completely stymied. Haven’t read all the posts in detail, but will next. Thanks again.
Very Helpful. I almost broke the case because I did not see the screw until I found your presentation. Thanks.
Has anyone with the 4 click scenario actually been able to recover their data and what were the steps.
And does anyone know what those clicks are. Sounds pretty bad to me.
Thanks in advance. Who needs Western Digital’s help when we have this sort of help.
mine had no case screw at all. model wd16001032-001 160gb. it did have facilities for one in the metal frame but none in the plastic slide. the case was removed with catches and clips, and the two latches toward the ’spine’ on either end.
But did you mage to retrieve the data Tom ?
Thanks for the right up! I too almost mangled mine because of that hiding screw. What did you use to re-cover the little screw before you sent it back into WD? I know they will void the waranty if I use electrical tape or …. Black finger nail polish. (?)
Downwind, I am getting the clicks as well as no visible drive in windoze too and will tell you what I find after I get the thing plugged into my motherboard. BTW. The one utiility that I ran told me that it had a “Sector 0 Error”. Dunno if it means death or not but, I want my 400 gigs of data.
The clicks you are hearing are likely the RW heads cycling over the platters and it is usually not good news when this happens.
As has been suggested, try chkdsk or scandisk and see what happens.
Whatever that means
Hi.
Great guide! I have a MyBook 160GB, and the only difference between mine and yours is that mine doesn’t have a screw that is hidden behind a sticker (or paint, as you described). There’s solid plastic in those areas.
Mine DOES however have those plastic catches at the tops and bottoms, just like yours.
Good job, man.
Dear Readers,
Just to update you on my experience. Today I received the USB to SATA IDE cable that I ordered off of eBay. Took “My Book” apart no problem, and powered it up with the USB SATA cable. “My Book” powered up for a few seconds and emitted the famous few clicks of death then shut down. This is exactly what happened when it was in its enclosure using its power etc.
So in short, whilst I was glad to have found this site and appreciate the help that Scott has been to some people, for me and “My Book” its the end of the line. My book is now awaiting my power grinder to destroy it completely. I could of course send it back to the geniuses that made it, but they charge for data renewal and whilst peeling back the silver foil, I inadvertently tore a piece off, so their not likely to honour the guarantee.
Oh well, only 200 GB of high res photo’s taken of peoples weddings and stuff. Not to worry eh. The moral of the story, if its worth keeping, back it up at least three times on different machines disks or cards and NEVER trust one machine and one make.
My point also is that if you have the click of death, then you’re unlikely to be able to retrieve your data with the use of attaching the unit directly to your computer. In other words, don’t order the cable, don’t take the drive from its enclosure and if you don’t mind the manufacturer dicking with your files, might be worth sending it back to them.
Scott, thank you! Mine did exactly the same thing. WD refered me to CBL to transfer the data to the replacement hard drive before returning the defective one, and my local CBL lab wanted $250 just for the time because they have “more important” tasks. “Anyone can do that, like Best Buy for $90.” Thanks to you I did it myself.
Downwind, kiss of death clicks sounds about right. I have 99.9% given up on rescuing the data. I am a noob at Linux and will try more on that side.
The HD hooked directly to my windows box delivers a blue screen when the OS attempts to start. The BIOS see its existence as a SATA drive but, it doesn’t know what it is.
The closest thing I got to a potential fix for the death clicks is via Acronis software while it was connected via USB and still in the case. The error was Sector 0 but, it too couldn’t continue.
Goodl Luck all and thanks a LOT Scott. I don’t know if I did already but, without your help, I definitely would have voided my warranty.
To the folks with the “click of death”: 99 times out of 100 your data is still on the drive- it is just the read/write heads that are malfunctioning. If you can find a drive of the EXACT same type and swap the controller cards (the electronics on the bottom of the drive), you have a 50-50 shot of fixing the problem. The controller card will have a bunch of numbers on it somewhere- either a sticker, or a REV # burned right on the board (or both). These have to match, or be as close as possible.
If that doesn’t work you can then try to replace the drive headstack- but it is not for the faint of heart:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/articles/2006.02.17-Changing-headstack-Q-and-A/
The biggest obstacle is finding an identical HD. The drives WD uses for these external devices probably have a unique part number, firmware rev#, etc. that you won’t find elsewhere. You could do an RMA and see if you get another drive of the same type and canabilize it for parts, but really your best bet is to just buy another My Book at the same retail outlet you found yours at. If you do the later and decide to return the device after parting it out please don’t stick the next customer with it- return it as defective, not as “I just didn’t want it”.
This is an excellent article Scott- thanks for putting it up. An FYI to others: as you can see be the comments, there are a couple different case designs out there. I have one not yet mentioned. It is a 320gb My Book, and it does not have the hidden screw, rubber feet on the face, or hidden clips all around the edge. There are however four small rectangular rubber feet on the bottom near the serial number sticker. Hidden under the feet closest to the “spine” of the My Book are releases for two catch clips. These are the only thing holding it all together. Using two screw drivers, press them both in and then use your third hand to slide the shiny plastic “book cover” piece off, as in Scott’s picture : http://www.ransackery.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/mybook3.jpg
My 6 months old MyBook 250Gb is apparently slowly dying… it’s slowing down, showing I/O errors and, now, not even showing up on windows anymore
(although I hear its spinning)
This guide to open the case seems to be of great help as the data in it is more important than the HD itself. Had never noticed that there was that hidden screw, but…
….repeating a previous question:
“What did you use to re-cover the little screw before you sent it back into WD? I know they will void the waranty if I use electrical tape or …. Black finger nail polish. (?)”
thanks!
Trotinetes, I did not “re-cover” mine and it did not void the warranty for me. I was worried about that, too, but WD’s support distinguished between the hard drive and the case when I talked to them before opening it up. I was even more concerned about the silver tape inside as mine tore a little bit. None the less, WD accepted it upon return. You must be most careful with the hard drive. No opening or scratching, etc. As long as it is intact and you take care with the rest of the enclosure, you should be okay. It was okay for me.
That’s good news for the warranty! I send them an e-mail to WD through their support site some days ago and no answer.
Anyway, I finally got the HD out (it’s the WD MyBook 250Gb usb2.0), and I’ll be trying it on a PC over the weekend. I didn’t damage the case (well, just a little scruffed)!
The disc isn’t SATA (as I expected), and there isn’t any silver tape!
and the cable between the 2 panels is sort of glued (not a problem as I disconnected everything from the HD)
Thanks for the help so far!!!
Hey- thanks for the 411 on the WD external hard drive. I am glad that you took the time to post your info on the web!
Thxs a lot! The best description availabe, should be definately placed on the WD support page
Harald
I’ve hit this same firmware killing the drive issue with my Western Digital MyBook 500 Premium external hard drive. Is there anyway to force an update on the drive, or am I going to have to swap this one with a new one and return it back to Best Buy?
I’ve had the infamous “clicks of death” encounter with my 500gb my book as well. jus taken the drive out of the enclosure and about to hook it up directly. i’ll let you know what happens although im not very optimistic about it after reading all the posts.
P.S. HUUGE thanx to scot for this blog. we need more ppl like you on the net!
Mine is a newer model, without the hidden screw hole. Getting into this was similar to iPods or MacMinis (I do a lot of Mac work). There are two small plastic tabs that are hidden by glued on rubber feet on the bottom (the two closest to the LED side of the case. These tabs index into twin little slots. With careful work, you can depress them and slide the case apart.
Alternatively, you can use a putty knife or a black stick to work around the edges of the seams to get things apart without scuffing up the plastic or breaking anything. Neat container, but I wish it was easier to get into.
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is 031707.
CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)…
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)…
0 percent completed.
So mybook 500g essential, essentially quit being able to move copy view the files contained therein although the drive shows up in win xp and lists files, but hangs when trying to open them up. Connected via usb, was working fin earlier today. So when running chksk got the above, hanging at the second stage.
So i am a candidate to pry the drive out and mount it in an external case and recover my data? No clicks of death, just stays on when unplugged and copies maybe 20 pictures and then hangs, multiply that times 1000 pictures not backed up, do i have i fighting chance to recover all from the hard drive after freeing it from it’s incompetence?
interesting reading, thanks for all the comments read above with depressing ernest.
TIA, patrick
Well, my drive had a similar behaviour (MyBook 250Gb -see above-, and it just ended up dead!
I removed it from it’s case, tried everything (with the help of more specialised friends) and, basicly it’s a mechanical fault (the spinning rate fails to keep it’s constancy)!!
WD support replied to my e-mail WEEKS after I sent it!! And, they’ll replace the drive but I need the data =(
Options right now are paying for an expansive data recovery service or let go of the data…. (well, it’s my fault. These drive should be only for back-up, not trustworthy for anything else, really…)
For most data recovery efforts, it is a matter of repairing the corrupt directories. On the Mac side, at least. Don’t know how many different ways various Windows OSen can screw with the file structures, but for those of us with a Mac, products like Diskwarrior or Drive Genius are fantastic at recovering ‘dead’ drive data before a low level reformat (and reuse). Trotinetes’ post sounds more like hardware failure, at which point he’s stuck with the ‘more expensive’ data recovery places. However, with anything that has bearings, it may be a heat-related issue and if he can get it running long enough to grab some files, turn it off to cool down, spin it back up and grab a few more, etc. — he might make some progress. Some people claim putting a drive in a freezer overnight helps. I’ve never seen that, and am reluctant to try. But I have seen where one can ’spin’ or quickly rotate a drive (in the plane parallel to the platters) to get a ’stuck’ drive spinning again. That has worked for me more than once. People who hit their drives almost NEVER get their data back
Iszatso — we do data recovery, so if you want, contact me off list via our website. We get a lot of ‘dead’ windows drives that don’t even mount for XP or Vista, but the Mac can see them just fine.
Well…I am having the same problem as Paul is having. I disassembled the drive and installed in internally with serial ata. And wala, the data was there. But then it still gave me the same problem with the I/O. What can I do?
Thank you for this guide.
I hurt myself a bit digging for the screw that doesn’t exist on my wd5000c032 model, but the rest was very accurate.
If you don’t mind, would you like to suggest to people that they try to open their case WITHOUT looking for the screw if they have a wd5000c032 ?
Now the case I worked on has an unnecessary ding in it.
Not vital, but it’d be nice. I’m still terribly grateful.
Why WD doesn’t offer this simple advice is beyond me. Hoping to sell more drives?
Better tech support might sell more drives too.
Best resource for taking apart the WD MyBook! Although (after scraping away the corner to find no screw), later models can be disassembled in a similar fashion to replacing an old iPod battery - run a putty knife or similar around all the edges and then undo the clips as indicated in your 2nd and 3rd pictures. The cover then slides off. I was able to ditch my broken 250GB drive and fit a new 320GB one in it’s place. Thanks for this.
I`ve got the same problem with my MyBook Essential 500GB as Wes:
XP still recognizes the drive as a WD hard drive, but the capacity is wrong (2048GB) and there`s no partition.
When using it internally, my S-ATA Controller finds it but says “0GB”.
Thanks for any help
flocu
I have a WD 500gb premium that recently got the click of death, and I’ve tried all the techniques above to try to open up the drive– nothing’s working. There’s no screw, and I can only seem to locate a slightly-flexible plastic “catch” on the top, not the bottom. I’ve tried to run a knife through the lip all the way around to find a clip, but I can’t seem to find anythign there either. There must be something I’m missing here. Any other ideas before I just give up and throw it against the well and hope for the best?
Begin to remove the rubber strip surrounding the enclosure at the top and bottom. Insert a flat bladed screwdriver the the “spine” on the mybook, and depress the catch. Slightly pry the the case using the screwdriver and you should begin to feel the case separate. Repete on the other side and your home free.
Now about that click of death. . . .
Thanks, PFKL, despite all my previous trouble, your advice worked like a charm. Now to find out if I can actually recover anything any the drive…
I have a new SATA WD MyBook. There are “NO” screws holding this case closed.
Place the hard drive case upright, with the LED (mines blue and blinks up and down as you access the drive) facing you and the smooth sides of the case at your left and right. The rubber feet should be facing down.
Take a small pocket knife blade and place it just left of center, between the smooth case and the vented case. press down between the two cases about a 16th of an inch. gently continue to apply downward pressure and slowly twist the knife blade and the two halfs of the cases will begin to seperate. when the case opens about a 16th of an inch, you can then reposition the knife blade or use a small screw driver to seperate the case further.
The smooth part of the case should slide all the way forward and off, with out having the vented case move. IF YOU ARE MOVING THE VENTED CASE, YOU ARE USING TO MUCH PRESSURE. Mine was sitting on my keyboard tray and I opened it with just one hand.
All the components are mounted in the vented case, with the exception of the LED lens.
SKIP - did you have to remove the rubber strip first? I have a newer one (purchased in May 2007)
I was following steps where the rubber had to be removed, and i think i tore a bit of the rubber stripping. There goes my replacement
Kyle - I did not remove any rubber strip. I have a 320gig SATA and a 250gig IDE and neither have a rubber strip. The 250gig drive, does have the screw, and is located on the top, right, back corner. That is if you position the drive in the same position as mentioned in the previous post. You then still need to press down on the plastic locking tabs on the top and bottom of the case. Pry gently on the smooth cover until it moves about a 16th of an inch.
Kyle - My drives are Essential and Essential Edition II. The Pro is the type with the rubber strip going all the way around the two covers. Judging by the look of the Pro (square/rectangular vent holes) they would have the plastic tabs at the top and bottom of the case.
To bad they are not all made like the Premium Edition II and Pro II. 4 screws at the corners and the two half’s come apart.
Skip - ya i have the two tabs on the top and bottom, i’m just wondering if removing the rubber strip is necesssary, or if pressing down the catches and trying to separate the two halfs will be sufficient.
Like i said before, i started to try and remove the rubber and some of the lip tore a bit. Now i doubt i can get away with an RMA.
Does anyone think that i’m screwed because of the rubber stripping…? I’d like to get my data of the drive and still get it replaced
BTW mine is model wd5000d032, if anyone was able to open this type can someone please post pics… or something.. i can’t get this damn thing open
Well i got the Hd out of the case, it appeared during boot up but it didn’t appear in my computer. I checked out Disk Management, and the drive is “Unallocated” ..woohoo corrupt partition
So… How does it come apart?
It came apart quite nicely one i bought a small putty knife. Just so everyone knows, to open the model WD5000D032 you do not have to remove the rubber strip. There are two catches one on the top and one on the bottom… by pushing these down and using a putty knife to gently pry the two parts apart. It’ll came apart.
I’d post some pics on where to pry if i could.
But ya once i got it hooked up to my computer, it turned out the reason why it didn’t map was because the partition on the drive was pooched. So i recovered the partition and bingo, all my data was there. I put everything back together and it works again.
mine’s a 250gb my book essential and when i connect it via usb to my laptop, it recognises it as a usb mass storage device but after that, the light just blinks and after 5 minutes, the autoplay pops out but it’s not reading anything. i just wanna know if my hard disk inside is alright and is it possible to retrieve everything after taking it apart?
I have the 1TB My Book Studio Edition, the case have a picture of a lock with a “K” on it do i have to worry about that?
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=374
I got my data off, but I can’t get this rubber strip back on. I attached it on all but the top side and it just won’t go in. Any ideas?
For all those poor souls with the clicks of death problem, there is hope. There is a magical piece of software I have used on many different makes of HD with the death click and it has repaired and recovered nearly all of them. It’s called HDD Regen and I think it’s Russian. It’s well worth trying although I have seen it take over a week to recover a severely damaged 20 gig HD. The important thing is it recovered the data. http://www.dposoft.net/
It’s $60 but that’s a lot cheaper than data recovery services. Try it, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. And no, I don’t work for them or earn any comission, it’s just a bloody good tool I have used.
Oh great guide by the way, I’m about to internalise my own 500GB Mybook and this will save me ruining the case.
Alex Wright, your idea is good. It wont work on my click of death drive because my drive (via USB or Direct connect) isn’t recognized by my cmos/bios therefore, HDD Regen can’t find it to fix it.
Somebody else recommended replacing the board on the hard drive however, I found only one “exact” model number for sale and it was only one item and some where out of the country so I didn’t trust the purchase enough to try. But, I think that is the answer.
Heads up RMA’ers:
I’m currently RMA’ing it through Western Digital now(as of 11-24-2007) and they tell me there is a supply problem and they don’t have any so I should expect a two week shipping delay. I even authorized them to charge me $250.00+/- for expedited service (no charge when they receive my RMA warrantied return)… So, I wait.
Scott-
Let me be another in the long line of THANK YOUs. A friend’s 80 Gb MyBook stopped working after it was unplugged accidentally. youe site was the ONLY one that popped up when I searched for the WD model number, and damn! if it wasn’t exactly what I needed.
Long story short, got the case open, removed the IDE drive, hooked it up and burned a few DVDs of iTunes holiday music-the user will be most pleased! Thanks again for giving back.
thnx! it worked for me.. my harddrive was already firewire 800, but i decided to build it internally for more speed into my macpro. only thingy is that on the european version (the grey/silver one with the rubber edges) there is no srcrw. just hook the two lips and it’ll come off. when you’re sure about damaging the case, i recommend to take the rubber off first. that way the case will slide much better apart.
thnx again. i am now going to relax at 750 gig’s - holla!
sorry for the poor grammar. if it aint dutch, it aint much!
Thanks a bunch. Only that my 500GB USB MY BOOK case is put together differently. No LED circuitry in front (just a diode) and no taped hole on the outer case with release screw. I did end up breaking 3 plastic L brackets. Next time I’ll just buy the drive. The USB controller in these case are poorly made.
wonderful guide. my USB port busted but otherwise everything worked fine; i kept getting power surge errors. WD offered to replace the drive, but that doesnt help me recover the data already on it now does it? anyway, pulled it out just fine (after a few fruitless and aggravating attempts on my own). again, thanks
One more happy reader. Thanks for the guide and comments, I was able to open my 500GB MyBook Premium, due to increasing bad clusters and most of the recovery software doesn’t like external drives. I plugged mine directly to the SATA controller and I was able to recover 98% of my data. Now I have it running SpinRite to see if I can revive it, if not it’s going for RMA.
Wow ! Am I glad I stumbled upon this blog ! Thanks for all the help everyone ! I purchased the 500GB for $99 and it only lasted a couple months. Probably the USB, and I couldn’t find any screws to open it ! Thanks again.
Hi all, I have WD 500 Essential Edition, and when Im going to copy datas to another HD or mount an image… windows says : “Mistake in the delayed writing” oh my god… I can play all in my wd but I cant copy nothing to my wd and I cant copy from my wd to another hd…
Could anyone help me? pleaseeee…
A friend/co-worker brought me his Premium ES drive to salvage since I am the IT guy. Thanks to multiple posts above, I was able to remove the drive and mount it in a computer.
To those who can get Windows to see the drive but get errors copying data to/from it, remove it from the case and install it in a computer on the secondary SATA channel in place of an optical drive. Windows will report problems upon booting and run chdsk on it for you.
The one I am working on will probably run chkdsk overnight, but hopefully I can recover most of the data in the morning.
First update:
chkdsk completed, but still could not copy the data. Touched the drive and noticed it was extremely hot. I’ve seen this before, so I removed the bare drive completely from the housing. I then enclosed it in (2) ziploc bags being sure to remove as much air as possible and put it in the freezer to bring it to a very low temperature. Only use ziploc type bags to seal the environment for the drive. Moisture can destroy the drive and ice crystals in the bag mean there is moisture.
Sometimes when drives go bad, they begin overheating. Freezing them may make them operational long enough to recover the data. I’ve done this before with internal IDE drives, so we’ll see if I can reproduce the results with a SATA drive.
Anyone know how to open a WDH1CS10000 (My Book Home 1tb). I w