I have a total of 7 western digital hard drives, 6 8TB my books and 1 16TB my book duo.
It has become quite a project getting them all working properly with various usb 3 hubs.
Can I take the hard drives out of their enclosure and add them to a NAS such as a synology without losing all my data on them?
The answer is "maybe", but probably not. There are a few potential issues:
1) SOME drives in external enclosures are specifically made so that they will not work when connected to a standard SATA port. There are typically workarounds to this like covering up one pin on the connector, etc. Search YouTube for "shucking <model of your HD>". For example, "shucking western digital 8tb my book".
2) This is the bigger problem - unless you are running the disks in a JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) configuration, the disks will need to be reformatted to organize them into a RAID configuration. Check your NAS documentation for details.
I agree with @hsehestedt
The only time I dismantled an external drive that was supplied in its own enclosure, I found that its connections were completely different from those of a 'standard' hard drive.
You might find the same. You might also find that you have to break the enclosure in order to get inside to have a look and you might not be able to put it back together to be able to continue using it.
Denis
I have recovered the hard drives from 6 external devices. All had standard SATA hard drives inside, both 3.5" and 2.5".
All have some kind of controller board attached to them in some way so they can bridge the standard SATA connections to the USB connection use in the external case.
Western Digital, to my knowledge, uses standard hard drives in their offering.
There are dozens of videos on Youtube that show how to remove the hard drive from a Western Digital MyBook enclosure, and how to do it in a way that you could reuse the enclosure in the future. It's always best to see how someone else does the procedure before trying it yourself for the first time.
Standard disclaimers:
You will void the warranty on the external drive.
Many external drives have encryption technology automatically engaged. I don't remember if it is the MyBook or the Essentials product that does it. Best to check this and that you know how to completely wipe and reformat one of these before trying to use it as a standard drive.
I think that the My Book drives may all be SATA ones in external enclosures. (The My Passport ones are not, and would be worthless for your purpose.) So, you could re-use them in a NAS.
I have no idea whether you could hope to keep the data on them. I read of encryption on the drives, but, as far as I know, I have never used encrption. I have just plugged the drive into my system, and I installed no software. I have used one drive on multiple systems, so I doubt that any security measures are in force.
Hi @CampNowhere ,
Be aware that all Western Digital External drives ( both the desktop and portable varieties ) except the Elements model are hardware encrypted. The hardware encrypt/decrypt chip is in the SATA to USB bridge inside the enclosure.
The data that goes in is automatically encrypted and saved into the HDD. The data that comes out is again automatically decrypted.
Once you take the HDD out and connect it to a SATA port outside such as in a dock, what you can get is the encrypted data which will be useless. So before you take the HDD out of its enclosure you need to copy all data to another drive. Also be aware that the hardware encrypt/decrypt chip generates its own key. So the key for each external drive is not the same. So make sure you mark each pair so that you can put it back into their respective enclosures if need be.
After plugging it into a dock or connecting internally directly to a motherboard SATA port, you can format the drive and copy all data back into the drive.
Thanks for replies! Sounds like I have to transfer my data to another drive.
So does this mean I can still use the drive in a nas once I’ve transferred my data off them? The drive don’t have any extra hardware attached once I remove them from the enclosure?
As I said the encrypt/decrypt chip is on the SATA to USB bridge circuit board which is plugged into the HDD SATA connector. . Once you plug it out , your HDD is like any other HDD except that the data inside is encrypted. Hence the need to save the data to another drive before you unplug the SATA to USB bridge board. ( Whether your HDD has the 3.3 Volt pin is a different issue. In that case your HDD will not be recognised unless you mask that third pin)
( Recently I unboxed two Seagate backup plus portable external drives - one 1.5 TB and another 5TB. Both did not have the 3.3V pin. I plugged those into my ORICO dock and they worked straight away. Only Seagate Backup plus Ultratouch is again a self- encrypting drive.)
If an end user were to open an external WD drive and insert it into an empty bay of another computer according to the comments it may display gibberish as its encrypted. Would the end user be able to copy and paste by reconnecting the WD to its case and using a USB port?
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