Converting WD ELEMENTS DESKTOP DRIVE to BARE DRIVE - Is it Possible?

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
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I have a 2TB WD Elements External Desktop Drive that I’ve been using with my MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, the interface is USB 2.0 and really slow, and I’d prefer to use the drive with my Thunderbolt drive dock.

Will the drive work (I believe it’s a WD Black) if I take it out of the case and use it as a bare drive with the Thunderbolt dock, or are the case’s drivers and electronics needed to make the drive work?

Thank you!

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I’ve taken apart several USB2.0 external hard drives from the their original enclosures and put them in my cheap 3rd party USB3.0 enclousure.

They all work fine … and faster :slight_smile:

hard drive “shucking” is a common practice and you’ll find that all hard drives can be removed from their enclosures and re purposed .

Short Answer: Yes, it will work. (i would be very surprised if it didn’t !)

Side Note: Removing a hard drive from a WD My Book will work, but you won’t be able to access any saved data due to hardware encryption. But, you can format/wipe the hard drive and use it however you like.

WD Elements have no encryption … so you will be able to access data if you remove the hard drive.

1 Like
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Hey Joey!

Thanks for your reply. That’s what I assumed, but you know how that usually goes!

The encryption or proprietary part is what I was afraid of. As long as the WD Elements Series doesn’t have either it sounds like I’ll be fine.

I’ll give it a try and post my findings here.

Thanks again!

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No worries :slight_smile: