WD My Book take apart or IcyBox+regular HDD ?

[vivant]

Hello!

I would like to purchase a WD My Book (vertical without the 10$ extra-design) 3TB (2013 or 2014), black. However surfing the internet I've learned that these drives take in the data after encrypting it and when the encryption device from the HDD will fail I will lose all my data from the external HDD and there's nothing left to do.
So to me this seems as it is a matter about when the encryption board from the external HDD will fail, not if it will fail.
Everyone seems to talk about taking the HDD out of the case.

Question 1 : If I just transfer all the data away from my WD My Book 3TB can I just remove it and format it and use it as a regular HDD ?

In case the previous idea is not recommended I wanted to just purchase an Raidsonic Icy Box IB-120StU3-Wh white (the one with two HDD slots) along with a WD Green 3TB SATA-III IntelliPower 64MB or a WD Red 3TB SATA-III IntelliPower 64MB.
Question 2&3 : Is WD RED any good for this or is it overkill ? Which do you guys recommend ?

I will use all these space to store programs, kits, images, work that doesn't fit on my laptop's SSD, so I want the data to be safe.

I already own a WD My Book 2TB, I have dropped it a bit on the side several times but it's still very good. Main problem is that it can't do more than one operation at a time (i don't know how to translate this in tech terms - small buffer size maybe? I don't know I've never opened it and cannot gain any info on the drive inside the case)

WD My Book 1170 USB Device
Manufacturer Western Digital
Form Factor GB/2.5-inch
Interface USB
Capacity 1862 GB
Real size 2,000,365,289,472 bytes
RAID Type None
S.M.A.R.T
S.M.A.R.T not supported
Partition 0
Partition ID Disk #4, Partition #0
File System NTFS
Size 1862 GB

Question 4 : Given all that I've recently seen on the internet I think I should just remove it from the pathetic WD vertical case - which is designed to fall to the left or right - and damage my drive - and put it in the IcyBox (that has two hdd slots). What do you think about WD My Book 2TB 2012 and about my solution ? What problems could occur ?

Thank you!

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

The problem with the hard drive in a factory-made external unit is that the drive usually has a proprietary connection interface that doesn't match a standard SATA interface, so you wouldn't be able to connect it to a third-party enclosure, or install it internally in a system case.

I know this from experience. In doing this, WD & Seagate (and others) seem determined to prevent you from using the drive in anything but there own enclosures.

Of course, you can't be sure just by taking my word for it, and indeed I've never seen the drive interface inside a My Book, but all the WD and Seagate externals I've ripped apart in the last five years have had a proprietary interface.

You'd be safer buying a couple of externals (so you can keep two identical backups, one is not enough) that don't use hardware encryption (or make up your own externals using a couple of internal hard drives and two enclosures.