My 3TB external Essentials drive works fine; I’m conteplating installing its drive/s? into my shiny new PC and then reusing the enclosure with a 1TB mechanism. The first hurdle: how does one open the case? It is different from the older WD cases whose take apart is already posted on YouTube, etc. I see no visible screws, and under the sticker there is nothing either. Hmm. Then there is a hole in the back with a lock sign, that might have to do something with opening the case. Or not. Anyone knows how this new-fashioned enclosure can be opened? Grateful thanks in advance.
OK, I got past the enclosure hurdle, the box was held together by 4 plastic latches. So I got the HD out without damage, installed it into my Windows 7 Ultimate desktop, booted up the computer… which sensed the drive, flashed the correct drive WD30EZRS model in the popup, installed the driver successfully for it… and then nothing. The HD doesn’t show under “Computer”.
I hopped to Administrative Tools / Computer Managementr / Storage… and there is the WD Green Caviar HD on the list all right, except the OS shows this drive with 2.7TB of files on it as “not formatted”. I downloaded the SES driver from Wester Digital - still no love.
So the hardware works all right, the problem is around the format. Is this HD some kind of funky RAID? Should I download the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver for it (for my i5-2500k PC) to access all the files I put on this HD? TIA
If this is a drive that came with Smartware the board with the USB port provides hardware encryption. Even if you get HD recognized without it the data will be encrypted and useless.
Joe
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@#$%! Smartware. I don’t even use WD’s bundleware it still messes up my work. I’ve been moving HDs of all kinds between external enclosures and PC cases back and forth for years until WD decided to get “original” on me. So next year when I come back, I’ll have to bring another 3TB HD (a non-Smartware one, you bet) to this remote continent, just to move my data off the WD drive for the time it takes to reformat it.
Man, if I didn’t need this WD Smartware board next year to rescue my 2.7 TB of data to safety, I’d smash it into pieces with the enclosure right now. All right, I’ll wait a year. I’ll practice my swing. :wink:
