GearHack: Revision: Western Digital Elements External Hard Drive Disassembly

Older Revision of Western Digital Elements External Hard Drive Disassembly

Revision: 20100905_062715 | All Revisions

Western Digital Elements External Hard Drive Disassembly

The Western Digital Elements External Hard Drive has a plain black enclosure. It's as if WD made it for people who want to hide their hard drive or keep people from noticing it.

If you look around the case, you'll find no screws or holes of any kind. There is only a power port, an USB port, and a LED can be found on the back-side of the enclosure. WD even put the bright white LED on the back to keep this drive covert.

You can find a seam on the bottom of the drive, all around the edge. If you slip a miniature flat-head screwdriver, you can easily pry the enclosure apart (see photo below). The plastic is made to snap together easily, so it's a good candidate for re-use. Unfortunately, the SATA to USB adapter isn't reusable (see below).

The SATA to USB adapter is mounted to the internal hard drive with two screws. A ground contact is snapped onto the USB port and touches the drive like a clip.

The internal hard drive in the 2TB version is a Western Digital WD20EADS. It is a 3.5" 7200 RPM SATA drive with 32MB of cache.

Comments & Discussion >>

Is the Internal Hard Drive Replaceable?

The question is whether it's possible to replace the drive inside the case with another SATA drive. We might want to do this when the 2TB drive eventually fails. Or maybe we simply want to use the 2TB drive somewhere else and swap a different SATA drive into this case.

The answer is no. I tried a 1.5 TB drive, a 750 GB drive, and a 500 GB drive in the case. None of these drive work. If I try to do anything with the drive in Disk Management, it would say access denied. If you are able to get any other drive to work, please let us know.

Comments & Discussion >>

Does the Internal Hard Drive Work Without the Case?

After pulling the 2TB hard drive out of the Western Digital case, I was able to use it with an USB adapter and within a Seagate USB case. So the internal hard drive is really just a normal hard drive.

Comments & Discussion >>

Older Revision of Western Digital Elements External Hard Drive Disassembly

Western Digital Elements External Hard Drive Disassembly

Is the Internal Hard Drive Replaceable?

Does the Internal Hard Drive Work Without the Case?

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