Recently ran into the situation where a friend of mine had a Western Digital Essential Edition 500GB External Hard Drive that died after a couple months of use. He'd plug it in and try to power it on, but the thing wouldn't fire up. Called WD, and was told it was under warranty, but he had a couple hundred gigs of data on it that he didn't want to lose. Data recovery -- even though it seemed likely the drive inside was still fully intact -- would run him upwards of $1500. Looked to me like the power supply was just dead, so we decided to forget the warranty and crack open the enclosure to see if we could get the data off. Turns out there is a standard SATA 500GB drive inside the enclosure with model # WD500AAKS.
What you will need:
1. Dead Western Digital Essential Edition External Hard Drive that you think has a dead power unit but a functional drive.
2. Some screwdrivers
3. A 3.5 inch SATA enclosure or a computer with a free SATA port and SATA power supply (to get your data)
What follows is the procedure we used to dismantle the external enclosure. THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY!!!! Only dismantle your drive if you feel the value of trying to get your data easily off the drive (and netting a 500GB internal SATA drive) is worth more to you than getting a new drive from WD under warranty. This procedure is provided as a guidance if you want to try this so that you aren't going in blind. Don't blame me if your drive itself turns out to actually be dead, or you break the drive during this process!
First, you will need to scrape off the gunk that they've used to seal the main case screw on as shown in the picture. (The gunk is what tells them whether the case has been tampered with or not). Undo this screw in the upper right corner of the drive.
The next step is to get the hard drive and it's "pages" removed from the "binding" of the book. Use a flatheaded screwdriver or some other flat device to get under the edge of the exterior edge of the "book." You'll need to go around most of the perimeter to get all the tabs undone. This will require a little bit of force! When you're finished, you'll be left with :
Now the hard drive is just held in by its cabling and the 4 large screws that go into its sides. (In the following pictures, the 2 exposed ones have already been removed... I got overzealous!) Problem is, the "pages" of the MyBook prevent easy access to two of the screws with a screwdriver. So, the next step is to get the black plastic pages detached. Looking at it from the hard drive side down, you will see 4 screws going into the metal, and then into the plastic Two of them are visible in the picture below; the third is behind my thumb, and the 4th is concealed by the hard drive off to the right.
With these screws gone flip the drive and its case over and remove the main circuit board. You'll need to remove 4 more screws, and then pry the black plastic around the USB port.
After the main board is detached from the front board (the front board is what once sat behind the main power button on the drive) we need to remove the 2 screws attaching it to the black plastic. These screws are the aligned upper 2 in the picture below.
With these screws out, you should be able to easily remove the black plastic pages of the MyBook. With that piece gone, detach the main board's power and SATA connectors from the drive. (This cable is under the silver foil)
You'll just be left with a little more casing, which you can now easily remove by detaching the 4 screws attached to the sides of the drive.
You're done! Now just attach the drive to your functioning computer or enclosure. Shut down first and be careful inside your case, etc. and copy the data to a new drive or just leave the drive in as permanent extra storage.
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