Wow, so glad I found this. I've got an Optiplex 7050 I'm migrating my Plex server to. My M.2 moved over fine but I shucked my 10TB WD Element drive and SATA will not read it at all. I'll have to try this tape. How's it holding up a year later?
I wanted to see how 3.5" external HDD looks inside, how differ it would be from 2.5" external USB. Not that much, except the power nest. Thanks for the video!
@@u4970 Oh yes, you're right! Thanks for that. I now remember why I didn't go with that option. I don't know why I forgot about it but I read that molex adapters can be a fire risk (never seen it personally) but here's one article. There's many more if you do a simple google search: www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-ssd/dangerous-molex-to-sata-cables
No problem, I was assuming you would back it up before removing it from the enclosure. If it’s not backed up, then don’t erase anything, see if you can just access the drive. If you can, then nothing you need to do, forget about the unallocated portion. You may just need to assign a letter to it if you’re not seeing it in windows explorer.
If it works, then you are good. If it doesn't work, then you need to cover the third pin so it doesn't go into power saving mode making it undiscoverable.
@@NeSpravedliviy114 if it works now you are good to go. If it doesn't work, then you can cover it and it should work. To answer your question, yes you can cover it at any point in time.
Thanks also for other answers. I try to summarize. Wd Mybook in disk management I see it with the letter "G". A small part , 350 GB says raw , everything else says unallocated. Since I have not written anything I am sure that almost all of my previous data is still there. What can I do to recover it, then after format the disk? So is there a way to restore the disk without losing data? thank you thank you
Ok I have 5tb external WD digital I finally backup up 5tb into 18tb disk. I did not tape anything. Now I get 3 hidden partitions. 1. 500gb, 2. 2000gb 3.2500gb. So I noticed that all usb drives are MBR standart. You need to convert to GPT. Because USB has problems reading huge tb disks and hits its limits. Find tutorial on microsoft "Convert an MBR disk into a GPT disk". Summary commands are: diskpart select disk clean convert gpt And finished all working. Use format disk. All 5tb are usable.
Unfortunately, I don't know since I don't have that device. It doesn't hurt to try it out with covering the pin (if it doesn't work, then try covering it).
Can you please suggest is there a way I can get rid of the power supply of the external hard drive. I want to use it like the one which gets power from the B to USB cable
Hi, I have an older version of HD. Tried to connect it using the SATA connectors. My pc recognized it as local disk, but didn't show the volume and it got stuck whenever I tried to open it. Any advice?
In this video, I show how to format a drive on Windows. I specify this for a MAC drive but it can work with other drives as well that the computer is not picking up. It doesn't always work but it works in most cases. Only do this, if you have the data backed up because this will erase your entire hard drive. th-cam.com/video/0jB2TRdBfFI/w-d-xo.html
Now can this external hard drive (when made to be used as an internal drive) be used as your C drive? I have an 8TB external sitting around and I need to upgrade my C drive, so I thought why not use what I have?
I have an issue same model wd10eads 1 tb . around 8 to 9 years old. thing is connected internally the drive from my book , 3rd pin tapped then computer doesn't even switch on. I remove power cable of the hd and computer does on ... What is the issue any idea
@@landpet i tried without tape it shows in bios windows doesn't open it i guess it is from my book and has a pcb controller, maybe encrypted , in disk management it shows and ask me to format and use the same and i have a lot of data i just cant format
So, I tried this method with my WD HD and it didn't seem to work. Idk if it's because my HD is an older model or something else but I was just wondering if there could be another thing at play here or if I might just be doing something wrong.
I would first try the hard drive without taping the 3rd pin to see if it shows up, cause older drives don't need this. This may be an obvious question but probably worth asking, I'm assuming your hard drive was working before you took it out? Some motherboards disable certain SATA ports when you're using a faster speed on an NVMe SSD so always a good idea to go into your BIOS to verify the SATA port you're using is enabled.
About the same, maybe a bit quicker but it's a spinning slow drive unless you use PrimoCache to speed it up. I have a video on how to speed your drives but you will either need unused RAM and/or an empty SSD or partition of an SSD which is used to cache the files to make it appear much faster.
Thanks. Does covering the pin mean that the drive will be constantly spinning while the PC is powered on, and if so, is there any way to make the drive power down when not used for 5 mins or so and power up when needed (as my external drives do)?
@@landpet My external drives stop spinning when not used for about 5 mins. When I try to access them, I have to wait 5 seconds or so for them to spin up. If you never have to wait like this when accessing a hard drive, then it is constantly spinning, which is a great way to wear out your drive and waste electricity. I believe the power options enable you to power down drives that have not been used for a while. I am not sure if that works on all drives though. I have one external drive that does not stop spinning, even when the pc has been shut down. If I forget to disconnect it when I shut down the PC at night, it's still spinning in the morning. This is something worth watching out for.
Hey there. I have a western digital caviar green (can't remember what year I got it). I have tried the tape trick on pin 3,also the first 3 pins and still no luck. Model #. WD10EARS-00Y5B1 If you have any tips or tricks. Would love to be able to clean up some clutter around my desk
Idk, try it out first without and pins to see if it works right out of the box. This is the first drive I've ever seen that has that, granted I hadn't done this for a few years before this one.
If your data is backed up you can right click and delete the unallocated part of it and it should give you a larger raw capacity and then you could do a new simple volume from the raw capacity again if your data is backed up.
Hi, I read somewhere that the drive is encrypted and you would need the board/chip to decrypt it. Is this true? I can't power on my WD HD and wanted to try your method. Thanks!
My drive was not encrypted, so no decryption needed. Once I put the special static free tape on the 3rd pin, it just worked. If the computer recognizes the drive but it's encrypted, you could probably format it, (assuming your data is backed up elsewhere, cause formatting obviously deletes everything on that hard drive) to get passed the encryption (granted I'm not sure if formatting will fix your issue but I assume it will), to make it a non encrypted drive.
@@landpet Thanks for replying. No encryption on my HD as well, but I did read that WD 'automatically' does it. Anyway, I hope your method will work, will let you know.
@@landpet Just to update you, so I have two hard drive that simultaneously had its power/board fried. My 2011 one, Windows was able to detect, all files intact. My 2015 one, unfortunately, Windows wanted to reformat immediately. No files detected. I would assume this is the encryption WD had in place. Thanks!
If you're ok deleting everything on it, then you can watch this video: th-cam.com/video/0jB2TRdBfFI/w-d-xo.html I talk about a Mac drive conversion here but it works for any drive. But again, if you do this, you will lose everything on this hard drive, so only do it if it's empty to begin with
Mines got a little water in it and started making beeping noises before it stopped working. is it possible to fix it? (Talking about the external hard drive btw)
Wow wow wow what kind of external hard drive? It is very very good for Final Cut Pro end my Files!! Also back up to prevent data loss disasters because if I lose my data I will die because it is important files and other And I will other one for my PS4 can recognize up to 8 TB of maximum capacity because PS4 needs to reformat because the PS4 has his own encrypted file system very good crazy 10 TB I have 8 TB it is very boring and reformat it to be my PS4 hard drive cannot recognize 10 TB the maximum capacity for PS4 external hard drive is 8 TB so it is very very good option if I moved all of my files to the new external hard drive like this you reviewed for my laptop and other that enclosure makes my iPad to recognize the hard drive my iPad only recognize NTFS fat 32 Xfat my iPad it can recognize NTFS but only read cannot write anything to it x fat read and write!
Yup! It's been a while since I've done this, but if I said SATA power, I meant the power. I do realize SATA is just for data and that is why there are 2 different cables, one is SATA and the other is for power.
That's crazy that you have to cover the 3rd pin to get the computer to recognize it. As always excellent thorough explanations! Glad I'm SUBSCRIBED!
Yup! Thanks!
Hardest part definitely seems like blocking that 3rd pin.
Wow, so glad I found this. I've got an Optiplex 7050 I'm migrating my Plex server to. My M.2 moved over fine but I shucked my 10TB WD Element drive and SATA will not read it at all. I'll have to try this tape. How's it holding up a year later?
It’s fine, still in my server
I wanted to see how 3.5" external HDD looks inside, how differ it would be from 2.5" external USB. Not that much, except the power nest.
Thanks for the video!
no problem
That third pin cost me a hard drive. Had I only known beforehand!
Yeah kind of ninja, not obvious at all.
@@u4970 Not on this particular drive from what I know.
@@u4970 Oh yes, you're right! Thanks for that. I now remember why I didn't go with that option. I don't know why I forgot about it but I read that molex adapters can be a fire risk (never seen it personally) but here's one article. There's many more if you do a simple google search: www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-ssd/dangerous-molex-to-sata-cables
@@u4970 No worries
Same
Will it work with the WD 4 TB ext drives?? I have 3 of them and I was considering doing exactly this to them to build my nas.
If It’s the same enclosure, it should be the same way I would assume
Can I do this without having to format the drive? I had it backed up to another external drive and that one doesn't want to power up neither.
Should be fine without formatting it but always backup your data before doing anything like this just in case something goes wrong.
I am going to use this to replace my original hard drive. Do I need to format this drive before doing that?
You may need to but back up your data prior to formatting
Sincerely thanks for the reply. One thing is not clear to me: how do I backup before deleting the unallocated part? Thanks
No problem, I was assuming you would back it up before removing it from the enclosure. If it’s not backed up, then don’t erase anything, see if you can just access the drive. If you can, then nothing you need to do, forget about the unallocated portion. You may just need to assign a letter to it if you’re not seeing it in windows explorer.
What if you already connected to pc and booted it without covering the 3rd pin?
If it works, then you are good. If it doesn't work, then you need to cover the third pin so it doesn't go into power saving mode making it undiscoverable.
@@landpet I mean will it work if I cover 3rd pin after I launched PC without covering it?
@@NeSpravedliviy114 if it works now you are good to go. If it doesn't work, then you can cover it and it should work. To answer your question, yes you can cover it at any point in time.
@@landpet Thank you!
Very well I will try Minitool software
thank you
hopefully it helps
umm, I think you don't really need a tape because scratching the pin would just block the connection off as well, just an easier way :)
Thanks also for other answers. I try to summarize. Wd Mybook in disk management I see it with the letter "G". A small part , 350 GB says raw ,
everything else says unallocated.
Since I have not written anything I am sure that almost all of my previous data is still there. What can I do to recover it, then after format the disk?
So is there a way to restore the disk without losing data?
thank you thank you
If you have the data to usb adapter from the case, I would try using that first other than that you can use recovery software. Minitool has one
5:20 sata is hot swappable if you enabled it in the BIOS.
Oh, good to know, thanks
Ok I have 5tb external WD digital I finally backup up 5tb into 18tb disk. I did not tape anything. Now I get 3 hidden partitions. 1. 500gb, 2. 2000gb 3.2500gb. So I noticed that all usb drives are MBR standart. You need to convert to GPT. Because USB has problems reading huge tb disks and hits its limits. Find tutorial on microsoft "Convert an MBR disk into a GPT disk".
Summary commands are:
diskpart
select disk
clean
convert gpt
And finished all working. Use format disk. All 5tb are usable.
so i don’t know if you’ll see this but can i use electrical tape? or does it need to be that specific tape?
I would use that specific tape.
I'm getting the 2 TB WD Black P10. Will I need to cover the 3rd pin on that one also?
Unfortunately, I don't know since I don't have that device. It doesn't hurt to try it out with covering the pin (if it doesn't work, then try covering it).
@@landpet I did some research and apparently it does not have a SATA port. They actually soldered a USB where the SATA port would be at.
@@CultivatedBunny wow, good to know
Can you please suggest is there a way I can get rid of the power supply of the external hard drive. I want to use it like the one which gets power from the B to USB cable
The ones that just use USB are typically the smaller portable external hard drives.
Hi, I have an older version of HD. Tried to connect it using the SATA connectors. My pc recognized it as local disk, but didn't show the volume and it got stuck whenever I tried to open it. Any advice?
In this video, I show how to format a drive on Windows. I specify this for a MAC drive but it can work with other drives as well that the computer is not picking up. It doesn't always work but it works in most cases. Only do this, if you have the data backed up because this will erase your entire hard drive. th-cam.com/video/0jB2TRdBfFI/w-d-xo.html
Now can this external hard drive (when made to be used as an internal drive) be used as your C drive? I have an 8TB external sitting around and I need to upgrade my C drive, so I thought why not use what I have?
Yes you can do that
I have an issue same model wd10eads 1 tb . around 8 to 9 years old. thing is connected internally the drive from my book , 3rd pin tapped then computer doesn't even switch on.
I remove power cable of the hd and computer does on ... What is the issue any idea
From what I remember, the older ones didn’t require the pins to be taped. Have you tried it without taping the 3rd pin?
@@landpet i tried without tape it shows in bios windows doesn't open it i guess it is from my book and has a pcb controller, maybe encrypted , in disk management it shows and ask me to format and use the same and i have a lot of data i just cant format
So, I tried this method with my WD HD and it didn't seem to work. Idk if it's because my HD is an older model or something else but I was just wondering if there could be another thing at play here or if I might just be doing something wrong.
I would first try the hard drive without taping the 3rd pin to see if it shows up, cause older drives don't need this. This may be an obvious question but probably worth asking, I'm assuming your hard drive was working before you took it out? Some motherboards disable certain SATA ports when you're using a faster speed on an NVMe SSD so always a good idea to go into your BIOS to verify the SATA port you're using is enabled.
What is the performance of these WD Elements made internal?
About the same, maybe a bit quicker but it's a spinning slow drive unless you use PrimoCache to speed it up. I have a video on how to speed your drives but you will either need unused RAM and/or an empty SSD or partition of an SSD which is used to cache the files to make it appear much faster.
Thanks. Does covering the pin mean that the drive will be constantly spinning while the PC is powered on, and if so, is there any way to make the drive power down when not used for 5 mins or so and power up when needed (as my external drives do)?
I don't believe it will continue to spin, it only spins when you're accessing/writing data from the drives.
@@landpet My external drives stop spinning when not used for about 5 mins. When I try to access them, I have to wait 5 seconds or so for them to spin up. If you never have to wait like this when accessing a hard drive, then it is constantly spinning, which is a great way to wear out your drive and waste electricity. I believe the power options enable you to power down drives that have not been used for a while. I am not sure if that works on all drives though. I have one external drive that does not stop spinning, even when the pc has been shut down. If I forget to disconnect it when I shut down the PC at night, it's still spinning in the morning. This is something worth watching out for.
Hey there. I have a western digital caviar green (can't remember what year I got it). I have tried the tape trick on pin 3,also the first 3 pins and still no luck.
Model #. WD10EARS-00Y5B1
If you have any tips or tricks.
Would love to be able to clean up some clutter around my desk
My experience has been that it's either taping pin 3 with that special tape or taping nothing. You can try it without taping any pins
Is it necessary to use heat tape? If seen videos using Scotch tape, but I'm worried using Scotch tape might be a fire hazard
I only recommend the special tape I used. I would not use anything else.
Would Seagate drives have the same 3rd pin protection?
Idk, try it out first without and pins to see if it works right out of the box. This is the first drive I've ever seen that has that, granted I hadn't done this for a few years before this one.
I performed perfectly what was said in the video.
But when I go to see the disk there is a raw part and the other unallocated. what can I do?
If your data is backed up you can right click and delete the unallocated part of it and it should give you a larger raw capacity and then you could do a new simple volume from the raw capacity again if your data is backed up.
Hi, I read somewhere that the drive is encrypted and you would need the board/chip to decrypt it. Is this true? I can't power on my WD HD and wanted to try your method. Thanks!
My drive was not encrypted, so no decryption needed. Once I put the special static free tape on the 3rd pin, it just worked. If the computer recognizes the drive but it's encrypted, you could probably format it, (assuming your data is backed up elsewhere, cause formatting obviously deletes everything on that hard drive) to get passed the encryption (granted I'm not sure if formatting will fix your issue but I assume it will), to make it a non encrypted drive.
@@landpet Thanks for replying. No encryption on my HD as well, but I did read that WD 'automatically' does it. Anyway, I hope your method will work, will let you know.
@@plusultra7329 Sounds good, let me know. Hopefully it does.
@@landpet Just to update you, so I have two hard drive that simultaneously had its power/board fried. My 2011 one, Windows was able to detect, all files intact. My 2015 one, unfortunately, Windows wanted to reformat immediately. No files detected. I would assume this is the encryption WD had in place. Thanks!
@@plusultra7329 That sounds about right.
can you the same with sea gate
Generally speaking yes but I would definitely Google it.
Does it have to be heat tape?
That’s the only tape I would use
It is recognized en Windows 11 but not on 10...Any advice??
If you're ok deleting everything on it, then you can watch this video: th-cam.com/video/0jB2TRdBfFI/w-d-xo.html
I talk about a Mac drive conversion here but it works for any drive. But again, if you do this, you will lose everything on this hard drive, so only do it if it's empty to begin with
i tried it its not needed to cover up the pins actually
Nice! For mine it didn’t work without it
Didn’t work for me multiple times
why do some videos say cover last three pins, some, and yours, just the third? I am going to attempt today... and a little more knowledge be great
Only need to do the 3rd pin for this model, that’s the power saving pin.
Mines got a little water in it and started making beeping noises before it stopped working. is it possible to fix it? (Talking about the external hard drive btw)
Idk, you may need to call the manufacturer or take it to a repair place
i got i/o error from my old wd :(
I haven't encountered that
Wow wow wow what kind of external hard drive? It is very very good for Final Cut Pro end my Files!! Also back up to prevent data loss disasters because if I lose my data I will die because it is important files and other And I will other one for my PS4 can recognize up to 8 TB of maximum capacity because PS4 needs to reformat because the PS4 has his own encrypted file system very good crazy 10 TB I have 8 TB it is very boring and reformat it to be my PS4 hard drive cannot recognize 10 TB the maximum capacity for PS4 external hard drive is 8 TB so it is very very good option if I moved all of my files to the new external hard drive like this you reviewed for my laptop and other that enclosure makes my iPad to recognize the hard drive my iPad only recognize NTFS fat 32 Xfat my iPad it can recognize NTFS but only read cannot write anything to it x fat read and write!
exFAT is typically compatible with Mac and Windows, haven't tried the iPad though
sata is data NOT power...power is power
Yup!
It's been a while since I've done this, but if I said SATA power, I meant the power. I do realize SATA is just for data and that is why there are 2 different cables, one is SATA and the other is for power.