My book vs elements desktop

Hi all

Want to buy one of these two external HDD and my question is can elements desktop hdd be used without case? For example to connect hdd directly to the motherboard on desktop PC via SATA? I know it will void my guarantee btw.

And is there any difference between my book and elements desktop in performance and quality? I am guessing they use green version of hdd inside and because of intellipower it cant be black version of hdd.My biggest concern if I buy My book the circuit dies after 2yrs of guarantee and I cant use HDD via SATA because of hardware encryption.

Hi JablanVB, welcome to the Community. Opening the drive case is not supported, we can also not guarantee the model that will be inside the case. The hardware encryption is there to protect your files in case someone tries to access them by directly connecting the internal drive to the PC, but once you format the drive it should be usable again. For more information check the link below. 

What kind of hard drive is inside a Western Digital external product? 

Thx for quick reply,appreciate.

one more question,hardware encryption encrypts data before storing it on HDD that means HDD itself doesnt have to do anything with it,it just stores data that is encrypted,and all logic for encrypting is on the case circuitry ? and if it is as you said than only data that is on HDD is lost when circuitry dies because you need the same circuitry to decrypt it? as for the HDD it should not be damaged when something goes wrong with case circuitry,and can be used on a different case from the same model,ofc without data that was encrypted? 

And I cant find warranty for Elements Desktop is it the same as My Book 3yrs?

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp#emea