is it possible to crack open a external hard drive and slap it into my PC? if so please explain how

[General Winter]

when digging through best buys deals, i found one that was very interesting, 8tb of storage for only $130, thats really good, but i want it in my PC (since i have the space); whats the most fail-proof way of turning one of these into an internal hard drive

 

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-8tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/6110900.p?skuId=6110900

[Oshino Shinobu]

Most of the time it is just a regular HDD in an enclosure. So you just take apart the housing, take out the drive, then plug it into the PC. 

 

EDIT: This will almost certainly void the warranty, bear in mind. 

[General Winter]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

Most of the time it is just a regular HDD in an enclosure. So you just take apart the housing, take out the drive, then plug it into the PC. 

i assumed such but i'd rather not assume how to do it (taking apart the housing) and break it

[Oshino Shinobu]

3 minutes ago, General Winter said:

i assumed such but i'd rather not assume how to do it (taking apart the housing) and break it

 

I'm surprised they use Red drives in these. The 8TB red drives are much more than $130 (basically double the cost normally)

[Crunchy Dragon]

2 minutes ago, General Winter said:

i assumed such but i'd rather not assume how to do it (taking apart the housing) and break it

There are probably screws you can take out to open the housing, then just take the HDD out I believe

[Himommies]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

There are probably screws you can take out to open the housing, then just take the HDD out I believe

or just smash the plastic gently

that's what i did

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Sometimes you can indeed remove the HDD from the enclosure and connect it like you would any other HDD, but I have encountered some external HDDs that have proprietary PCBs with integrated USB ports, making it impossible to connect them via SATA like a normal HDD would.  Like the 2.5" WD HDD below for example

 

 

 

Also, when you remove the HDD and put it internally, what are you going to do with the enclosure?  90% of the time they just get thrown away, creating tons and tons of plastic and electronics garbage.

[minibois]

I know in the past WD Elements 3.5" drives used to have WD Green hard drives inside, which is the old name for the WD Blue 5400rpm drives.

It is possible to remove them from their housing (of course keep in mind it voids the warranty), but breaking the SATA data or power cables is the most common things that go wrong, so keep that in mind.

[Crunchy Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

Also, when you remove the HDD and put it internally, what are you going to do with the enclosure?  90% of the time they just get thrown away, creating tons and tons of plastic and electronics garbage.

Recycle it

[Matty2048]

unscrew all the screws

 

[njmyers3]

Here's some useful information: Inside those drives are modified WD Reds with a white label. The only notable difference is that these have the 3.3 volt reset pin connected, so you need to make sure that whatever you connect this to does not have that pin wired, or the HDD won't start.

 

(not my picture, got it from r/DataHoarder)

[General Winter]

3 minutes ago, njmyers3 said:

Here's some useful information: Inside those drives are modified WD Reds with a white label. The only notable difference is that these have the 3.3 volt reset pin connected, so you need to make sure that whatever you connect this to does not have that pin wired, or the HDD won't start.

 

(not my picture, got it from r/DataHoarder)

explain it to me like im 5

 

i have no idea what you said

[njmyers3]

5 minutes ago, General Winter said:

explain it to me like im 5

 

i have no idea what you said

AFAIK one of the pins on sata power is a 3.3 volt wire that triggers a HDD "reset". If the drive gets power on that wire it will try to restart, but since it's constant it won't turn on. You can get around that with certain cables/adapters or by using a backplane, which is unlikely in a desktop pc.

 

Edit: It was used on older drives when sata was first created, but manufacturers stopped using it. For some reason WD decided to connect it on this drive, probably to make using the drive outside the enclosure more difficult.

[mariushm]

The SATA power connector has 3 pairs of wires, which deliver 3.3v , 5v and 12v to devices:

 

 

 

In the picture above, the orange wire carries 3.3v to devices.

However, in the past there was a lot of power supplies that had no sata power connectors at all, so those molex (ide hdd connector) to sata power connectors were made, which simply ignored the 3.3v wire, the devices received only 5v and 12v.

Because these adapters are still common, a lot of devices are made to assume 3.3v may or may not be present, so they don't rely on that voltage, they just assume it's not there.

Some companies went further and decided that it's pretty much safe to assume nobody will put there 3.3v on desktop computers so let's reuse those three pins in the sata power connector for other things. One of these things is Power Disable ... basically when the hard drive detects power on that pin, it stops the hard drive.

Here's an explanation from HGST :  https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/resources/HGST-Power-Disable-Pin-TB.pdf ( jump to page 3)

 

 

 

So basically, the conclusion is : if your power supply has SATA power connectors with all three voltages (5 wires going into the sata connector), you'll have to either remove that 3.3v wire (the orange one in the picture above), or you'll have to use one of those cheap molex (ide) to sata adapters, which has no 3.3v wire.

If the 3.3v wire remains connected, it will confuse the hard drive into thinking you want the hard drive to "sleep" and it will only turn on when there won't be any signal (the wire is removed or power supply stops providing 3.3v through that wire)

 

 

[Highflow]

This topic might be the solution for my problems i have on s external SAS enclosure,

drives seems hardly come online and keep that.

 

It can be the problem that 3.3 volt is applied to the SAS expander backplane resulting drives dont spinup as it should,

but for now its hard to tell if thats the problem, the enclosure is all modulated so hard to do any messurments.

 

The thing is that another expander enclosure works for years on the same controller (Highpoint 2722) but just SAS port 1 while the new enclosure is running on port 2.

The first enclosure dont apply 3.3 volt to the drives as the backplane is only supplied by the standard 4 pin molex 5/12 volt.

 

I cant find out yet whats really going on , i use several drives WD green, and WD red even the new 10TB have trouble to start well and keep online.

Staggered spinup should be disabled by defaulth i read from the information from Highpoint and i see no settings for that even.

 

Hope that anyone can tell more about it.

[AshleyAshes]

I use a power drill. :3

 

[Highflow]

lol, well its a pretty nice enclosure , handy to use for more harddrives, i love this simple construction

[Highflow]

BTW i checked on a WD green 3TB drive which came out of a WD-Elements external usb box,

pin number 1,2 and 3 are connected, but those pins just lead into the drive and is not connected to anywhere in the drive

as i search around with my Fluke.

So pretty sure 3.3 volt wont do anything at least on the 3TB green models.

 

Things keep a mistery hehe 

[kirashi]

On 11/11/2017 at 8:29 AM, Oshino Shinobu said:

 

I'm surprised they use Red drives in these. The 8TB red drives are much more than $130 (basically double the cost normally)

They don't always use RED's - sometimes they even use White drives, which are re-badged Blue drives that might have had a small defect at the factory. /r/DataHoarder has more information on playing the external drive lottery.

[Highflow]

lol, yeah who knows the reality, i also think they will find a way to bring failed drives on the market