NOTAM to all Western Digital My Book users....

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

In case you are unaware, there resides within each of the last series of Western Digital DESK TOP version, NOT the PASSPORT form factor.....My Books USB 2.0 or 3.0, external drives, and the current new-series one, a full SATA-Helium Drive, that runs at 5,400 RPM. They chose 5,400, over 7,200, for the reason that the former lasts longer, and runs cooler, as well as needed less power (watts) consumption, for all read/write operations. Unfortunately, the smaller Passport form factor, has a drive that is also SATA, BUT, it has the USB to SATA interface hard-wired into the drive itself, so can not be attended to by the user, if it is the reason that the drive no longer communicates with your system.  The Desk Top My book, is a full stand-alone standard SATA drive...and CAN be run as an internal in-system drive, independent of the My Book enclosure.

The Helium drive is a very good drive, and this is the important part of my post

In case for any reason, that your My Book does not seem to be able to read or write from the drive, there is a Daughter Board that is the USB to SATA interface. If that board goes for any reason, the drive shall appear silent.  If you are off warranty (three years), then all you need to do...is carefully, or even, not so carefully, if the case might become damaged, is that being that the drives inside are full 3.5 inch form-factor-SATA, YOU CAN RUN THESE DRIVES DIRECTLY INSIDE YOUR COMPUTER TOWER, AS IN ANY OTHER INTERNAL SATA DRIVE!

So, don't merely throw away the drive as 'no longer working'....it could be the Daughter Board USB3 to SATA  that is the problem, (off warranty, etc) or could be the A.C. brick. (of course you can easily order another brick, or try another brick from a drive that is working just fine, to diagnose in this case, of lack of power)

Remove the drive from the My Book enclosure, and place it into one of your internal HDD drive bays, and merely hook up your SATA cable to it...and away you go!  You have full access to all the data, files, storage of that drive.  That's another reason that I choose to buy them, rather than fill my eight HDD SATA slots up with internals,that only add to the internal tower temperature of the computer compartment, the fans have to deal with.

So, if you have a honkin' nice 2/4/6/ or 8 TB Helium HD drive My Book, you only have to retrieve it from its My Book casing, and slap that puppy into your system, then as a resident INTERNAL HDD drive.  Just another reason to give these a look over for such as storing all your Ortho4XP tiles, if that is one of your things....

Cheers,

Ses

[mazelda 124]

Unfortunately I had one a while back, tried that idea but for me it must have been the drive itself as  the pc still didnt like it after trying to change it to the internal drive.

Still its a good idea  and does'nt take long to try.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

1 hour ago, mazelda said:

Unfortunately I had one a while back, tried that idea but for me it must have been the drive itself as  the pc still didnt like it after trying to change it to the internal drive.

Still its a good idea  and does'nt take long to try.

Hi Pete, like I said, it has to be from the Desk Top My Book series and not any 2.5 inch Passport, that would go with a lap-top, on the run.  When you did hook it up to the SATA cable, and pressed it securely onto all the pins, can you vouch for a full flush fitting of the cable face to the SATA pin-outs? Sometimes this is a problem for all of us...thinking we had a good pin-connect, on all of them.

Also, you might have had to let Windows know about the drive, as Windows does not always auto-sniff a new drive install. I have had this occasionally. If you have not got rid of the drive, you might want to make sure the SATA cable was fully seated, and that you go to your Drive Management in either W7 or W10, and 'user add' the drive.  Again I had to do that with two of my regular internal drives, one a 7,200 rpm, and the other a 1TB 10,000 rpm Velociraptor. That actually might have been your problem, if you are saying that your O.S. did not see, or interact with the drive...it could have been easily corrected.

Also, it could have been the format of the drive...exFAT, or NTFS. You might only have needed to do a one-time, format operation, even if you might have lost all the data contained on it, via a needed re-format, BUT, you'd still have a fully functioning internal drive 'for free'...(smile).  Things to keep in mind, the next time you fool around with any HD. :)

Cheers,

Mitch

[mazelda 124]

Yea tried all that at the time,it was a passport model so had to take the usb connection off before i tried the sata cable connections were all good though.

Tried to get windows to recognise it but from what I can remember got a series of errors trying to reformat it so resigned the drive to a dark cupboard somewere

Can't remember what was on it now,I think it was a backup of a backup

So not too damaging

Cheers

Pete

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

58 minutes ago, mazelda said:

Yea tried all that at the time,it was a passport model so had to take the usb connection off before i tried the sata cable connections were all good though.

Tried to get windows to recognise it but from what I can remember got a series of errors trying to reformat it so resigned the drive to a dark cupboard somewere

Can't remember what was on it now,I think it was a backup of a backup

So not too damaging

Cheers

Pete

That explains then why it did not work. The Passport hard drives have a built-in, hardwired USB to SATA, and if that gets borked...so is the drive.  With the Desk Top My Book...it is a free-standing Daughter board...so the drive is total SATA compliant for internal usage.  The drive itself, needs the daughter board to be interrogated on the USB bus and not the stand-alone SATA bus.

Yep...with the Passport drive, you can't get past the USB-to-SATA interface, that of course if used internally, the O.S. can not work with, on the SATA cable bus.  That was it...the Passport drive HAS to be accessed through a USB hub....even though it is actually a SATA drive.  Parts of the USB to SATA is wired internally within the drive on the circuit board. That's what makes its usage, fatal as a stand alone.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

My Western Digital Desk Top version My Book 8TB came today and just installed it.  Usable TB's clean, is 7.27TB, after format.  Wow...it is FAST!  It came formatted as exFAT, but the first thing I did, was to reinstall all the latest  W.D. software versions that came with it, and then reformatted to NFTS, which allows W10 to fully utilize all its O.S. hard drive routines. If you only will run with a My Book, on a W10 or W7 platform, the first thing you should do, is re-format to NFTS using the Quick Format option.

Very happy with the drive!

Ses

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Glad to report my write speed of 2.97 MB's per second.  Very fast...USB 3.1 SuperSpeed