For WD Tech Support: My Essentials external drive wishing to upgrade

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
#1

Can anyone at WD engineering tell me what is the largest capacity hard drive that will work with the following controller card:   4060-705059-001 REV. A    The unit model number is:  WDBAAF5000EBK-01

It came with a 500GB hard drive.  I have a WD 1.5 Green Drive that I’d like to use but the controller card doesn’t seem to have the capability to handle that size.  How about a 1TB instead?

#2

The WD Community was created for Users (such as yourself) to help one another, and to share your experiences and ideas with one another. 

It would be best to contact WD for Technical Support directly on this situation:

http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en

#3

That particular bridge board was used in 2TB MyBooks.

See these threads:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-for-PC/Loose-USB-port-on-WD-external-hard-drive/m-p/72396#M3048
http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-for-PC/My-Book-Essential-WDBAAFXX-4060-705059-Controller-Board/m-p/144518/highlight/true#M5246

#4

Thanks for your reply.  The board seems to be paired with the drive and the firmware Smartware stuff.  When I put another drive into the case, Windows sees only the Smartware partition and the drive itself, although present in Windows Disk Manager, is not accessible.  So somehow or other, the Smartware is preventing me from replacing the drive.  I’d like to use the case the drive came in but unfortunately, Smartware appears to be the bit that’s preventing me from doing so.  The folks at WD support were not able to help me, this being a situation they probably never encounter.

In any event, the only drive that works is the one that came with it!  It’s like the case was meant to work with only that drive.  I’ve tried three other drives plugged into that board and no go.  I wish I understood what the firmware was up to with the Smartware stuff as apparently there’s no removing it.  It’s certainly not a standard HD enclosure, that’s for sure.

#5

The SmartWare VCD lives in a reserved section at the end of the drive. It is not unencrypted. However, the user area of the drive is encrypted by the Initio INIC-1607E IC on the USB-SATA bridge board. In order to use a different drive, you will have to initialise and reformat it. However, before you do so, have a look at sector 0 and sector 1 with a disc editor or hex editor.

This thread may be very illuminating for you:

http://forum.hddguru.com/disk-with-sata-usb-adapter-remove-virtual-rom-t18492.html

#6

Absolutely fascinating read.  Well over my head, but fascinating to be sure.  At the end of it all, the OP got what he was after.