WD My Book removal and formatting?

[CrimR]

So I picked up a couple Mac WD My Book Studios and it seems getting them apart is more complicated then I would have thought.

This is the model:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=200

I have two and had planned on removing one and just putting it in the machine, but two problems arise. One is the removing the case without shattering it. The old ones were easy to take off these I can't find the release.

Two is they come with some virtual CD garbage that shows the disc as a CD rather then a HDD so formatting doesn't want to happen particularly from a Windows machine on a device that is Mac ready. (Couldn't beat the close out price though)

I can resort to Linux if that is of any help, which it usually is for oddball tasks that take more control.

Anyone opened these enclosures before and know a way to remove or bypass the VCD junk?

Thanks in advance for reading my wall of text.

 

[danraies]

You're not going to get them out of their cases gently. I can't tell if they're molded shut or glued shut but whatever it is, they're designed for the case never to come off. The case is basically made out of two pieces. If you think of it like a book, one piece would be the "jacket" with the front cover, back cover, and binding - that's the part that has the status light. The other part is where the pages would be - it has the ventilation and it has the the ports for power and data. There is a seam between those two pieces. When I take them apart I use a screwdriver and/or pocket knife to GENTLY separate that seam. I have a friend that uses a soldering iron to get that process started but I can't bring myself to but a soldering iron too near a hard drive.

My suggestion for the formatting is to use parted magic to wipe the drive - that should get rid of any garbage or extra partitions. Parted magic is a linux-based utility with some different tools on it. You don't have to install anything. It runs right off a bootable CD. I could write instructions, but just do some googling to find someone that has written a tutorial on using parted magic to wipe a drive.