WD MyBook case for another hard drive

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

Hi, that’s my first post here.

Few months ago I have bought a MyBook 4TB HDD and used it for some time. Recently, i took out the HDD that was inside, put it into my PC (i am building my own “NAS” system), and wanted to use my old internal 500gb WD Blue 3.5 HDD in that enclosure. Everything went fine, i put that WD Blue in the case, drive is spinning and it is even visible in Windows Disk Manager, but i can’t initialize it, because when i try to do it, Windows says there is a hardware problem. I don’t know what the problem is, i have tested it and formatted the drive minutes before putting it inside and it worked fine. Does WD blocks other hard drives by its firmware on the circuit board? If so, that means MyBooks are just e-waste, but i don’t want to throw away a good case.

Thanks in advance.

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Hi @hivonzooo,

Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the WD Technical Support team for the best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask

3

For future viewers, i just found it if you took the HDD that was inside out, and try to put in different one it won’t work. WD is blocking it by a chipset that is soldered into the motherboard of this case. So, it is really just a e-waste and i thrown it into trash because it was useless. It’s sad that WD is treating their customers this way, first i was locked out of my “My Cloud Home” because of a data breach, now this. But it is also a lesson for the future - never buy a WD external drives, better buy internal one and third party case for it.

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Hi! Is it possible to get your device with purpose to try to reanimate it? No HDD, but just WD MyBook. I am in Canada.

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No one at WDC ever promised that anyone could hack their non serviceable enclosure to use with another HDD. If there is any e-waste, it is perhaps the user who tried to take this apart who is responsible.

Never the less, there are plenty of solutions, such as finding a compatible WD HDD or one still could with the 4TB My Book enclosure with the JMS579 chipset by hacking the firmware, all the information is out there with a little prior research.


> Now there is a workaround for 2020+ JMS579 WD locked boards. You can make them unbranded but downgraded to JMS578 firmware. After searching the web and reading in different places i made a package with a translated tutorial on how to do it.


Short version:
1.No HDD connected.
2.Cut or lift pin3 of WINBOND SPI chip(protection pin).
  etc...