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Would it be foolish for me to put the HDD from a WD MyBook into a different enclosure

AndrewMRiv

AndrewMRiv

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 29, 2013
151
0
Hello everyone, I currently have an extra 3tb WD My Book external HDD sitting around. It still works perfectly fine so I want to put it to use.

I am buying the OWC Mercury Elite Pro QX2 and am looking to salvage as many of my 3tb HDDs I have before buying any new ones. This will serve as my Time Machine backup drive for my iMac.

Would it be risky to remove the HDD from the enclosure? I have heard that the My Book Essential is encrypted, so would I be safe from that since I do not have that one?

Thank you very much.
 
D

davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Oct 28, 2006
2,798
398
Alice, TX
I broke open a WD My Passport and the connections on the actual HDD were proprietary, or at least not SATA.

I can't answer, but look online to verify the model you have has normal SATA connectors.
 
D

danny_w

macrumors 601
Mar 8, 2005
4,467
300
Cumming, GA
I removed the HDD from a 4TB My Book just yesterday and put it into a Caldigit T3. It did have a USB adapter on it but that was easily removed (1 screw). This particular My Book had a 4TB WD Green drive in it (several others have said that theirs had Toshiba drives). I use it for Time Machine so the slower Green drive is not an issue.
 
AndrewMRiv

AndrewMRiv

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 29, 2013
151
0
davidg4781 said:
I broke open a WD My Passport and the connections on the actual HDD were proprietary, or at least not SATA.

I can't answer, but look online to verify the model you have has normal SATA connectors.
Click to expand...

Thank you. I was able to verify online that my model does not have proprietary connectors :)

danny_w said:
I removed the HDD from a 4TB My Book just yesterday and put it into a Caldigit T3. It did have a USB adapter on it but that was easily removed (1 screw). This particular My Book had a 4TB WD Green drive in it (several others have said that theirs had Toshiba drives). I use it for Time Machine so the slower Green drive is not an issue.
Click to expand...

Got it! My plan is also to use this as a Time Machine backup, so I also will not be too bummed if I end up finding a Green drive inside the My Book I have. Thank you very much for you input :)
 
T

TheBSDGuy

macrumors 6502
Jan 24, 2012
319
29
It depends on the drive and how it's configured. Some of the WD's have special connectors, some of them actually have a type of hardware encryption built right into the USB adapter and drive controller making them non-standard. It simply depends on how the unit is assembled, and you won't know that until it's taken apart. WD can do whatever it wants to, after all the units weren't built with being parted out and used elsewhere in mind.:)

About the only thing I think you could do is take it apart and try it. If it works it works, if it doesn't it doesn't.
 
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