WD My Book Encryption

[adamjensen]

hello thread,

I bought a WD my Book 3tb about a year ago, what i am trying to do is use the 3tb WD Green drive as an internal. I have already removed the drive from the enclosure and attempted connecting via SATA III. I do not care for the data on the drive it was always just a backup. the drive does not show up in windows explorer nor does it in disk management.

Is there a way I could possibly format the disk to regain usage of it as a basic internal drive

 

[digitaldoc]

I had a similar situation with a HDD from Apricorn which would not show up either when it was out of the case. I think they lock the drive so it cannot be used on its own like this.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, adamjensen!

The hardware encryption only makes the data unaccessible, however the HDD should appear as un-initialized once you connect it via SATA III. What was the reason for taking it out of the enclosure? Did it fail and how?
If the damage on the drive was physical, then this might be the reason for it not showing up on your system connected internally.
There's another thing about the 3 TB external HDDs and their cluster size being configured with 4KB (8 x 512bytes) LBAs. However, the LBA system sees data in terms of 512-byte sectors, so taking it out of the enclosure exposes the drive to its default 512-byte emulation. Without an enclosure that has the same 4KB allocation unit size to help your system detect the drive and reformat it manually to 512e, I'm afraid you won't be able to detect and use the drive internally.
Here a couple of links to look over that can explain more about this:
http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=V0rfXB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_4_KiB_sector_issues

Hope this helps!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[adamjensen]

Hey there, adamjensen!

The hardware encryption only makes the data unaccessible, however the HDD should appear as un-initialized once you connect it via SATA III. What was the reason for taking it out of the enclosure? Did it fail and how?
If the damage on the drive was physical, then this might be the reason for it not showing up on your system connected internally.
There's another thing about the 3 TB external HDDs and their cluster size being configured with 4KB (8 x 512bytes) LBAs. However, the LBA system sees data in terms of 512-byte sectors, so taking it out of the enclosure exposes the drive to its default 512-byte emulation. Without an enclosure that has the same 4KB allocation unit size to help your system detect the drive and reformat it manually to 512e, I'm afraid you won't be able to detect and use the drive internally.
Here a couple of links to look over that can explain more about this:
http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=V0rfXB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_4_KiB_sector_issues

Hope this helps!
SuperSoph_WD

The reason for removing the drive from its enclosure was for no fault in it or anything, I just found myself just using the drive as if it were internal, although limited by the dated USB 2.0 ports that i had when i originally removed the drive. if i were to connect the SATA to USB that was in the enclosure could I format it in a way that allows my PC to use it without the adapter inside the enclosure?
I have read up on these drives and i'm pretty sure there is a type of encryption inside the drive somewhere so im wondering if i can find the damn USB cable they sent with it to me if there is a way i can reformat it to remove this

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hi again, adamjensen!

Yes, I think you should put it back in the enclosure and give it a try!
I'm not sure it will work, but I guess you have nothing to lose.
Check this thread as well: http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25798

Keep me posted!
SuperSoph_WD