Turning My Western Digital My Book Into an Internal Drive without losing the Dat

[MarkD1975]

Hello,
I have a western digital my book that went kaput on me and will no longer connect via usb. So I took it apart and inserted it into my computer as an internal hard drive. And that's where my knowledge ends. I'm lost what to do next. I'm trying to hopefully not lose the data on the drive.

 

[andrewcarr]

You have to connect the hard drive to your motherboard by an SATA cable and plug your power supply SATA power cable into the hard drive. It should show up on windows, it should still have the same information.

 

[MarkD1975]

I did plug it all in, but for some reason its not showing up.

 

[andrewcarr]

Can you tell if the drive is spinning up or not?

 

[MarkD1975]

Can you tell if the drive is spinning up or not?

The computer is recognizing it, when I start the computer up, it shows it connected to the third sata port, but it says there's a 5th master drive error. I was thinking I might need drivers to make it work with my pc since it was an external hard drive before.

 

[andrewcarr]

Not sure. You may have to format it.

 

[dpatt78]

I have had the same problem as well. Unfortunately the WD My Book Ext HDDs encrypt your data whether you want them to or not. Therefore you only have a couple of options. First if you still have the piece that broke off you can try and have an electronics repair shop solder it back in place. I actually super glued mine back on, which worked for a while until my dog knocked it over and broke it off again. Second you can send it to western digital and have them 'Attempt' to recover your data for you. (not sure how you're suppossed to access the data since i doubt they will send you a new bridge board). This also costs more than a new ExHD. Third and possibly most painful if you want to put it in a desktop like you mentioned you'll have to reformat your HD resulting in all your data being lost. This issue has been such a pain for me. The customer service at Western Digital has been atrocious. The attitude of there customer service reps are the worst I've ever seen basically telling the customer to go pound sand. I hope I am wrong about your option and there is a way to install without losing data but so far I havent found any answers. Best of luck to you.

 

[stuza]

....

Thanks Dpatt, at least for the explanation

I cannot express how p(&ed off I am with this and will NOT be buying another WD USB drive.

I bought a 3tb drive for an old PC, spent days and days transferring data to it. Then ripped it out of its enclosure and bought it with me to my new home in another country. Built a new PC (SATA 3) and plugged it in to discover this issue and then, with Google, this thread.

I don't suppose a miracle has happened and someones cracked this have they?