How to Shuck/Open WD MyBook/EasyStore/Elements External Hard Drives

In this video, I show you how to remove the 3.5" SATA hard drive used inside WD MyBook, EasyStore and Elements series external hard drives.

These "external" hard drives are really just standard 3.5" desktop hard drives that are attached to USB to SATA adapters and get their power from an external adapter. They can be removed for use in a regular desktop, NAS or home server.

This is useful for a few things:
- If external drives stop working, it's generally the converter PCB that stops working. If you have an issue with a drive not showing up, but the drive sounds fine, this is a simple (and free) way to be able to recover your data provided you have another SATA interface. This was why I first opened up one of these drives.
- External drives are generally cheaper then internal, especially on sales. It can be cost-effective to buy external hard drives to just remove the drive inside. My current desktop drive used this technique. Quite interesting given that in the past, sometimes it was cheaper to buy internal drives, and buy an enclosure if you wanted to use it as an external drive.

Note: Taking apart a drive may void your warranty. If it's a new drive you want to turn into an internal, make sure you test it first, before doing this!

You should probably use plastic tools if you're doing this to a new drive. The drive I'm using is long out of warranty.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:28 - What is shucking? Why extract the drive?
00:38 - WD 3.3v pin 13 issue

(skip here if you want to skip the intro)
01:02 - Taking apart the sides
02:45 - Taking out the drive
04:03 - Note on the PCB
04:21 - Finishing touches

(skip this part if you're in a rush)
05:41 - External SATA hot-swap dock demo
06:13 - Conclusion

Note: Some WD external hard drives with WD white label drives use the SATA 3.3 spec, commonly known as the 'pin 13 issue' or '3.3v issue'. On these drives, the 3.3v SATA line is used to signal the drive to sleep. On desktop computers, you can either tape over pin 13 on the SATA POWER cable, remove the pin, cut the 3.3v cable, or use a Molex to SATA (lose all your data) adapter since Molex does not have 3.3v on the line.
See https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/9fsp80/created_an_alternate_guide_to_fix_33v_pin_issue/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/qbzjkk/i_shucked_two_wd_my_book_wd80edaz11ta3a0_and_one/ as a starter.

Apologies if there are any artifacts in the video, it was interpolated from my 60i camera to 30p to 60p through a couple filters using ffmpeg. See my ffmpeg scripts page on my website for info. Same thing if there's audio/video mismatch, since I use 2 separate recorders and sync in post.
Watch this video on Peertube: https://peertube.tonytascioglu.com
More info is probably on my wiki: https://wiki.tonytascioglu.com

Copyright 2021 - Tony Tascioglu
I'm making this freely available under a CC-BY-SA-NC license on Peertube.

I hope you enjoyed the video and learned something!

Corrections/Errata:
(will be updated as suggestions come in)

Видео How to Shuck/Open WD MyBook/EasyStore/Elements External Hard Drives канала Tony Tascioglu