How to converting a WD MyBook Essentials external to an internal drive?

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Ramyyemani

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Nov 15, 2016
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Hello, I have a WD MyBook Essentials 2TB external hard drive that I would like to use as an internal drive(Direct SATA).

About five months ago I had trouble with the enclosure, when ever I plug it in it takes a long time to load and only appears as a local desk with no size or other information, although it appears to be a healthy primary partition in Disk Manager.

I googled around and found that it's very common for the USB3-SATA bridge to fail and that the data is most likely encrypted by the bridge.

I was able to recover some of the data using GetDataBack NTFS, then I took the drive out of the enclosure and connected it directly via a SATA-USB adapter, the computer recognized it but it was not initialized and unallocated, it prompted me to initialize it as ether MBR or GPT, I checked MBR and hit Ok then it gave this message:
Data error (cyclic redundancy check)

I tried TestDisk 7.0 but if didn't find any partitions.

I tried HP USB Disk Format Tool V2.1.8, the same error occurred.

I tried DMDE 3.0.6, it kept displaying this message:

LBA:xx xxx xxx (try x): WinEror 1(or 2 ). The system cannot find the file specified.

I clicked ignore all and finally got to this page and I don't know where to go from here:

attachment.php

As a last resort I'm planing to use HDDerase to remove everything from the drive, as it's very risky and I'm using a laptop and to make matters worse, the power is not exactly what you could call reliable around here so I'm hopping I can avoid that.

Thank you for your time.
 
Solution
JaredDM


All hard drives eventually fail, 100% of them. Just like all car engines eventually fail, and every other mechanical device in existance. It is a reality people need to get used to and make data backup a priority. If you are fortunate you'll be done using a drive before it gets to the end of it's life, but you need to be ready for it to go any day.

If you need the data back, PM me and I may be able to walk you through how to go about recovering the data. (It'll be...
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Ramyyemani

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Nov 15, 2016
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SMART status: pass

Quick Test on drive 2 did not complete!

Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97 (unknown Test)
SMART self-test did not complete on drive 2!

Currently performing extended test.

Edit: The download page doesn't list the MyBook hard drive a among the applicable products.
Also I'm using a SATA to USB adapter with external power, not the original enclosure.

Edit: Extended test stop with error: to meany bad sectors.
what does that mean?
 
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

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Jul 30, 2014
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Hey there, @ Ramyyemani!

I'm afraid that @BadAsAl and @Rocky are totally right! :( You should definitely consider replacing this WD My Book Essentials instead of attempting to use it as an internal HDD. The fact that the HDD fails the extended test with this error means that it's no longer a save storage destination for your files. I hope you don't have any important data still stored on it that is not backed up, otherwise I'd advise you to consider contacting a Professional Data recovery partner. The professional assistance is your best bet on getting any of the rest of the files back.

Indeed the hardware-based encryption on the WD My Book models prevents you from accessing the files while having the HDD outside of the original enclosure that's why you were unable to get the data while having the drive connected via SATA.

I'd recommend you replace the HDD as soon as possible. In the future, make sure you always keep backups of your files stored in various storage locations (drives) on-site as well as off-site. Always remember that "backup" means that you have your data stored in at least two locations. Moving data from your system drive to an external hard drive is not a backup, unless there is already a duplicate of the file on a different drive.

Hope this helps you. Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD
 
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Ramyyemani

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Nov 15, 2016
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I find this very infuriating as the drive was handled very carefully, no one had access to it but me and it mostly sat at the corner of the desk and seldom moved.

For it to fail like that out of the blue, It's safe to assume we wont be using these products again.
 
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BadAsAl

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Oct 13, 2009
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It is unfortunate. WD has a good reputation but all manufacturers have a percentage that fail. I bumped my PC once while it was accessing the internal secondary storage drive and that is all it took to kill the drive.
 
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JaredDM

JaredDM

Honorable
Jul 8, 2015
716
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All hard drives eventually fail, 100% of them. Just like all car engines eventually fail, and every other mechanical device in existance. It is a reality people need to get used to and make data backup a priority. If you are fortunate you'll be done using a drive before it gets to the end of it's life, but you need to be ready for it to go any day.

If you need the data back, PM me and I may be able to walk you through how to go about recovering the data. (It'll be more complex now that you initialized it and overwrote the encrypted partition table with a non-encrypted one).
 
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