Vlad
Moderator
Just to be clear when I mention my WD My Book, it's the first revision of the very first ones to come out. Early adopter FTW.
Anyway I've had it for quite some time and just recently it was showing all the signs of a dying hard drive. Since my data was already backed up off of it and onto another drive I decided to investigate it a bit further. When plugged in Windows plays the tone indicating a USB device has been connected but it would take nearly a full minute and a half before the drive even showed up. It appeared to just sit at idle until it would connect and show up. Format times were much longer than they should be and transfer speeds were poor at best.
Fearing the hard disk itself had given out I decided to pry it open to look at the inside. Why not? It wasn't going to do me any good in it's current state. Turns out the plastic cases only snap together but there is a screw hidden under a thin part in the case you have to dig out before it'll actually come apart. With the drive apart I found there wasn't much to them. A main PCB and a smaller one for the button and lights with a small IDE and power cable inside.
Typing in the warranty number on the WD site revealed it was a retail drive they put into a metal chassis with rubber washers and the controller board. It's warranty had expired in 2007 but WD offered a User Loyalty discount if I purchased a new drive from them which I thought was pretty cool.
The next plan of attack was since it was just a regular IDE drive to hook it up to my machine and see what it did. I grabbed WD's Data Life Guard program and installed the drive. It passed SMART and WD's own test with flying colors. The hard disk itself is just fine, the problem seems to lie with the controller board that made the IDE > USB jump. So when it all came down to it, my external drive just transitioned to an internal one.
I'm not even upset about it really, I have a WD Passport and 2 Seagate externals for backups. (Everyone keeps regular backups, right?) All in all it was actually kinda fun seeing what was inside and ending up with a good hard disk. Just goes to show that even if something seems broken doesn't always mean it's useless.
Anyway I've had it for quite some time and just recently it was showing all the signs of a dying hard drive. Since my data was already backed up off of it and onto another drive I decided to investigate it a bit further. When plugged in Windows plays the tone indicating a USB device has been connected but it would take nearly a full minute and a half before the drive even showed up. It appeared to just sit at idle until it would connect and show up. Format times were much longer than they should be and transfer speeds were poor at best.
Fearing the hard disk itself had given out I decided to pry it open to look at the inside. Why not? It wasn't going to do me any good in it's current state. Turns out the plastic cases only snap together but there is a screw hidden under a thin part in the case you have to dig out before it'll actually come apart. With the drive apart I found there wasn't much to them. A main PCB and a smaller one for the button and lights with a small IDE and power cable inside.
Typing in the warranty number on the WD site revealed it was a retail drive they put into a metal chassis with rubber washers and the controller board. It's warranty had expired in 2007 but WD offered a User Loyalty discount if I purchased a new drive from them which I thought was pretty cool.
The next plan of attack was since it was just a regular IDE drive to hook it up to my machine and see what it did. I grabbed WD's Data Life Guard program and installed the drive. It passed SMART and WD's own test with flying colors. The hard disk itself is just fine, the problem seems to lie with the controller board that made the IDE > USB jump. So when it all came down to it, my external drive just transitioned to an internal one.
I'm not even upset about it really, I have a WD Passport and 2 Seagate externals for backups. (Everyone keeps regular backups, right?) All in all it was actually kinda fun seeing what was inside and ending up with a good hard disk. Just goes to show that even if something seems broken doesn't always mean it's useless.