I found some stores should be selling 500 GB WD Passport (2.5") drives on Black Friday for $60. Could I remove the hard drive from the WD and install it on my macbook? And would I then be able to take my current hard drive and put it back in the WD case for more storage?
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WD Passport - use drive for internal laptop drive?
- Thread starter dlegend
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flopticalcube
macrumors G4
awesome! Any tips on how to take it apart? I think I'm going to buy 2 so I can have one in my mac and another as a clone.
NewMacbookPlz
macrumors 68040
You should look around on this for the newer models because I think WD was the brand that changed the way their external drives are setup inside the case. The change made it so you can't easily disconnect the SATA connection from the USB connection; instead making it into a single non-removable piece.
there are loads of videos on Youtube showing how easy it is to do this, my question is however, if i do this will the data on it be lost when I do a clean installation of snow leopard?
alphaod
macrumors Core
That's what happens when you do a clean installation yes all the data on it is erased.
I don't think it was WD that did this... I've done it for two different computers both using a WD pocket drive as the hard drive donor. The only difference I saw from the two drives was the difficulting in taken the two drives apart. The older ones were easier to take apart the newer ones are harder and if you aren't careful will break off parts of the case to the point that you can't put them back together for a good fit later... but in neither case were the drives hard wired to anything inside.
Fyi..
FYI.. I just purchased the new passport 1TB drive in hopes I could remove it and use as an internal but no dice.. The drive no longer has the removable USB adapter. It is a specialized drive for external only with a USB port hard wired to the circuit board instead of the typical power connector... No more mixing /matching ;(
FYI.. I just purchased the new passport 1TB drive in hopes I could remove it and use as an internal but no dice.. The drive no longer has the removable USB adapter. It is a specialized drive for external only with a USB port hard wired to the circuit board instead of the typical power connector... No more mixing /matching ;(
flopticalcube
macrumors G4
NewMacbookPlz
macrumors 68040
I knew I wasn't imagining things!
Thanks/Sorry for finding that out for everyone else.. 🙁
Cave Man
macrumors 604
Just one more reason to not buy Western Digital. It's about the sh!++!est company out there. Their "customer service" also sucks.
flopticalcube
macrumors G4
idk, I had a desktop MyBook crap out on me under warranty and they were pretty quick to replace it. I agree that their drives have been average at best for me.
Cave Man
macrumors 604
I've had four WD desktop drives and three failed within 3 years. The one that pi$$ed me off the most failed at 11 months. Their tech support had me reinitialize the drive and it worked for 2 more months then failed for good. Since the warranty was only 12 months, they would not replace it.
flopticalcube
macrumors G4
LOL! I would have been pissed off too. I can see why you think so little of them. Its reasons like this that I have decided to go for separate drives and enclosures from now on as the drives often come with 3-5 year warranties whereas the pre-built ones are only one.
WD are without a doubt the best drive makers out there. We rarely have failures with WD drives at work, and I support a huge number of machines.
If you're seeing that many failures there's two possibilities:
1. Where you got the drives mishandled them.
2. You mishandled the drives.
I've still got machines out on the floor that are 5+ years old, running the original WD 80GB units, and they run 24/7.
Cave Man
macrumors 604
They came from different places - NewEgg, PCConnection and Office Depot.
So, I've mishandled 3 of 4 WD drives, but none of 8 Samsungs, 6 Seagates or 3 Hitachis? Can you give me a p value and confidence interval, too? 🙄
You left out possibility 3:
3. Western Digital drives suck almost as bad as their customer service.
That's the one I'll take. 😉
Skippy440
macrumors member
I've used exclusively WD external drives and haven't had any issues with any of them.
Currently using a 1TB WD My essential book and love it so far.
I would recommend that you invest in an external drive that is AC adapter powered rather than just USB powered. Seem more reliable.
I guess it depends on what day of the week it's made.......😀
Currently using a 1TB WD My essential book and love it so far.
I would recommend that you invest in an external drive that is AC adapter powered rather than just USB powered. Seem more reliable.
I guess it depends on what day of the week it's made.......😀
Bengt77
macrumors 68000
Not if you first clone your internal drive to the external drive. Then, after you swap the two drives, you have your complete installation back. That is, if you haven't put any crucial files on other partitions than your boot partition.
I have no internal hard drive right now, dropped my Macbook and it crashed, so currently I have a 250GB WD Passport and a 1.5TB WD Elements, I have some data, maybe 100GB+ of information on my 250GB Passport which I'd like to remove from it's shell and install into my Macbook to replace the failed internal hard drive. I asked because I've been having trouble moving data from the WD Passport onto the bigger WD Elements, copying and pasting only results in multiple CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) Errors, so I was hoping I could just install Snow Leopard without losing my data
Bengt77
macrumors 68000
I know you can choose the archive and install option when installing Mac OS X over an older installation. But I have to admit that I don't know if you can do the same without deleting your non-OS data that's already on the disk.
Anyone?
Not to make fun of you – I feel your pain – but your situation is exactly why I make regular clone backups of my MacBook's internal hard drive on both a 2,5" external drive and a 3,5" external drive. Especially the former is relevant here, as that allows me to be back up and running by simply replacing my MacBook's drive with the drive inside the 2,5" enclosure in case of drive failure.
Anyone?
Not to make fun of you – I feel your pain – but your situation is exactly why I make regular clone backups of my MacBook's internal hard drive on both a 2,5" external drive and a 3,5" external drive. Especially the former is relevant here, as that allows me to be back up and running by simply replacing my MacBook's drive with the drive inside the 2,5" enclosure in case of drive failure.