lol a 25c02 serial ram, there was one in every vga monitor so the display card could read the monitor i.d, handy for plug-n-play. That brand of controller is very common in usb to sata/ide converters. And a similar serial ram was used to store bios passwords in old laptops.
Thanks for the Chip number... I have about 35 WD My Book for MAC enclosures. Just loaded them with Seagate hard drives and put them to work on my PC network. The chip was located elsewhere on the board. It says Winbond but has the same number. Located the dot on the chip corner and cut the leg off using a pair of Revlon Toe Nail clippers... the pliar type clippers. Realy good tool for doing small electronic work. - Bada Bing! Now the enclosures all work with 4 TB sea-gate 10,000 RPM drives. The usb 3.0 works really fast connected to my main 3.0 USB to Gigabit LAN adapter base. Now I have over 130 TB of storage on my network using these enclosures and FREE NAS. I use the FREE NAS 7.0 from about 9 years ago. Has a built in webserver. Can sling them video to anyone now without a need for expensive storage.
It's generally a flash chip near the brain. On a Mybook 25EE, it was pins 7 & 8 of a winbond which had to be lifted. It didn't destroy the data. Might be easier & more consistent to just desolder the entire chip.
As others have mentions, all that chip does is the crappy WD stuff like encryption, and messes with the partition tables (hence the 2Tb showed up as unallocated). Helpful for identifying which disk is which, but not much use otherwise. By isolating that chips power, you have essentially turned that WD printed board into a generic USB3.0 to SATA board. It would be safe to connect to the 10Tb drive. Now you know that chip, when un powered, doesn't affect the operation of the PCB, I'd go ahead and desolder the chip so there is less chance of it shorting. :) A hot air station would make short work of removing the chip.
Hi dash8brj Thank You very much! I did also think it would be safe to connect the 10TB disk,, but after 3 days of copying the data,, I chickened out and took the safe way... :-/ glad you liked the video :-) Thank you for watching! :-)
Thanks - I have a 2Gb MyBook and replaced the drive with a 4Gb one. They MyBook would only recognise 2Gb. Now disconnected the power lead from the chip and.... bingo ... I now have 4Gb available from a Seagate drive. Super tip, well presented, thanks.
I think that if you try an hard drive , partitioned and loaded with data on a regular pc, you will be able to see all the data and work with it. The data on that drive has disappeared because it was initialized with that chip into the game, that make some non standard initialization/partition of the drive. Cutting out the chip was resulting in a unreadable hard drive. You can put a switch on that desoldered pin and play with it alot :-)
Hi MVVblog Maybe a magnetic switch,, if any one moves your box away from the little magnet it stands on, it will be unreadable. Thank you for watching! :-)
Sweeeeet! The board you have in the VID is for the 2TB version at least that's what mine had, followed your instructions and worked perfect. I also have a 4tb board and a 6tb board, lifted the legs on the same chip BUT BOTH Pin 7 and 8 have to be done on those boards. Thank you so much. I've been gonna toss the old cases for awhile so glad I found your vid before I did! Thank you.
I also found that if you just remove the chip entirely it also works, my model had multiple inputs for power so I just removed the chip entirely and now I can use it with any drive.
possibly similar to the hp externals the chip plays with drive layout. the data may not be encrypted but that chip and its process sits between the os and the drive. Usually they place small bits of data on the drive and the chip hides it but when you get raw drive access like removing the disk from the enclosure the data and partition tables are not where they are suppose to be. If you try a drive loaded over a sata cable or generic usb-sata with the modded board all the data should show fine as its now direct access. its not 100% that the 10tb wont be corrupted as thats a rather large drive and most nas's have a 4tb limit somewhere. why is your iscsi so slow it cant push 24mb/sec?(usb2's soft limit)
Agree, some controllers are evil. I have a pair of Seagate enclosures what tamper with the drive identification block size. As a result, the sector numbers in the GPT become incorrect, and a 4k sector drive initialized by the enclosure does not work on plain sata.
Hi 88djdmepfdnkjf94 Thank You very much! The USB2 limit was like 35MB/s,, but iSCSI was only 25-30MB/s,, I do not know and want to find out,, but need to keep data safe first. Thank you for watching! :-)
I tried mine (8TB Elements) with an 8TB barracuda drive and works without any modification. Putting it back in the case is a different story because the rubber thingies does not fit the barracuda.
Okay,, be aware that the WD box does some funny stuff to the data on the disk,, so without modifying it, you will not be able to read the data without the box.
I disabled pin 8 of the winbond chip on the Sata-to-USB3 PCB of my WD Mybook 8TB but it still shows "WD My Book 25EE USB Device" when connecting even with a different harddisk attached to it... strange. Needs some further investigation apparently.
Ok, I disabled pin 7 & 8 on the "Winbond 25X20CLV1G 1826" chip and now it's working. It shows as "ASMT 2115 USB Device". The disk is readable as if directly attached to a normal sata connection. Great!
Hi nekron75 Yes I have also heard that it will not spin down,, not that I have tested it,, as I do not really need that... But you might. ,,,Bill Paxton,, Thanx I think! Working,, good Job! good luck.. Thank you for watching! :-)
Same here on MacOS. I disconnected pin 8 to get the new hard drive to show up. I'm also seeing my Mac won't boot when the hacked WD My Book is attached.The drive continues spinning after powering off the mac. So it appears this IC handles those features as well...
i have 2 of such wd drives.One is old and dead.The other one bit more newer(couple years)but also in the proces of dying!.(Errors etc)I have had it with these wd mybooks! Now i have seagate baracuda 1tb for 50€
Excellent video - question: after the hack, does the drive then still automatically power on and off with the computer, or does it run constantly? Thanks!
Im using two WD My Book USB enclosures with non-WD HDDs on Synology. The controller with disabled Winbond 25X20 chip, controller become with 000000000000000000000 serial number and Synology not recognizing between two enclosures, and most time crashing Synology. Question is any way to avoid this? Probably not. The purpose of this chip not only preventing from using non WD HDD but also to translate HDD numbers with the chip to the computer to make every enclosure unique.
@@MyPlayHouse Video 622: it seems you weren't 100% positive of which chip to mod and you mentioned something about U2 being on the chip but it actually says beside the chip on the board. Interesting mod to put older drives in the my book wonder if it would allow the original drive to go back in place but I guess it would be recognized as the actual drive instead of MyBook which was the purpose of the hack to begin with.
My bet would actually be that the reason your computer didn't see the partition and data on the old hard drive after the mod is the fact that this little nasty "My Book" chip did that. So you could try using that 2TB drive in the USB 2.0 enclosure, format it there, copy data onto it and then look if the modified USB 3.0 board still sees the data. I bet it is still there, because now the USB to SATA bridge seems to work just like any other normal USB to SATA bridge, instead of being something yucky made by WD to lock the customer out.
I was thinking it would be fun to use like a CH341A programmer & make a firmware dump of that 8-pin IC. Then examine it to find if like the SN of the HDD is hard coded into the firmware of that IC. Thus preventing the enclosure's PCB controller to accept other HDDs (as either replacements or upgrades)... 🤔😎🙄
Thanks for posting this video. I was scratching my head on why my wd black 2TB was not working in my old wd mybook enclosure. I desoldered the entire chip and now everything works. The only thing I can't figure out is the power button as it does nothing. I have to physically unplug it.
i tried this and it gives me the same error. the chip you refer to is a winbond 25x20clv16 flash nand memory chip. its programmed to only recognize the previous drive, or a drive of certain size. to do this right, you'll need software to reprogram the chip to clear it.
Hey, Great info. Man I could acquire a bunch of these enclosures with all the parts on the cheap - make the mod & resell them at a higher price. 🤔😉😆 But everyone pretty much avoides the WD External Hard Drives as such because of the needles encryption that they apply. 😣
Recent 8TB MyBook purchases here. Attempted this mod. U5 seems to be the same chip on this particular PCB. After removing the leg, no power at all. This may be because I also tried removing the appropriate leg on U2 first as described, but that made no difference. So it seems that WD have changed the PCB to prevent this mod from being possible, more likely the chip needs to be reprogrammed. Basically f**k WD.
They try to control how users use their products all the time.. It's not always smart,, often they will sell more of a thing that can be ninja hacked,,
@@MyPlayHouse I have two, already shucked the drives and using them in a NAS. So the usb pcb was no great loss AFAIC but it's basically encouraging e-waste. I was hoping to reuse them for a Pi NAS project. Now I'm going to have to buy new enclosures. WD be WD. Shame that Seagate are no better.
Mine had a winbond 25x20clvig 1738. with pin 8 lifted it did not work, so I did what (nekron75) said pin 7&8 then it worked :) but as people thought would not spin down :( it also it also seems it would not park the heads. then I removed the chip as (Jonathan Sanchez) said no change. I don't think it safe to use if it wont park the heads, its the same as if it lost power your just not reading/writing
@@MyPlayHouse I believe Most if not all drives park the heads off the platters so they do not get stuck to them and either fail to spin up or damage the heads and platter surface , Thats why i think it is a bad idea to use it.
The heads are parked automatically, that's not a problem, you need to safely disconnect the disk from the system, then the writing will not be delayed and it is possible to safely disconnect the power supply without losing data. Just the constant spinning of the disc will cause premature wear, but even the discs are adapted for this.
I have re-used a few enclosures. Did a couple times at work had 2 mybooks die over the summer, one I threw a 1TB HDD in seemed to work, but ghost didn't like it for some reason. Many of these cases are a pain to open, etc though. The best external I dealt with was a 2TB samsung story station. Metal/plastic case, screwed together. Everything now is all plastic and snap together =(. Got a 3TB toshiba canvio and a pair of Seagate 8TB HDD that are just plastic.
Yes and NO,,, if your data is put on the disk with pin 8 connected,, you will not be able to read the data if you desolder pin 8,,, but data is still there.
@@MyPlayHouse then this won't work. I'm trying to retrieve my data from the drive. I saw another video that talks about some unblocker software but I went to the WD site and didn't see this. I downloaded what was for unlocking drives but it didn't work.
Hi David's Music Well it is a 1813,, and he has 8 x 4TB,, in SHR-2,, there was about 20TB :-) He does not really keep up with what I am doing. Thank you for watching! :-)
Hi!! very interesentig video!! In my case, the interface got damaged (the one who let you unlock the hard drive) and now Ican't unlock it, do you have any idea how to solve this?
didn't work for me... pin 7 is a reset no sure if that was inadvertently tripped by everyone else who did this but when i ripped the pin off i literally ripped the pin out of the chip, so yeah. Still just shows up as a mybook, next step, remove the chip.
Hi Gary DeSantis Okay,, :-/ I have been made aware of a power hack on new drives,, on some drives, you have to block the 3.nd power pin on the HD,, google it. might be what you are seeing Thank you for watching! :-)
... and that worked like a charm on my slightly newer (chip between power and USB port) My Book. I just took a wire cutter and cut the leg off. Thanks!
Hi Scott Downey Thank You very much! Well I learned about it last week,, I did not sit on it for long.. one of the good things about reading all the comments,,, there are a lot of you that are very smart ,and have small trick like this. Thank you for watching! :-)
Should work fine. Seems a bit silly though, you can get 2.5" generic SATA > USB3 cases for about US$10 on Amazon, and no need for external power. As far as that goes, generic 3.5" cases are about the same price, and you don't have to bother messing around with Western Dataloss hardware. Maybe if you're in a hurry and have one sitting around...
Honestly why would western digital even put that restriction on ? You have to put a different config rom on every version of the product for each size! That has to cost money !!!
Well that didn't work. Disconnected leg 8 then tried it with leg 7 disconnected and ....... Nothing! Still can't be found and the legs are too small for me to resolder :(
Stores the drive config data. Like name, some info about the drive, no firmware or stuff like that. Basically is like your nametag, it has a bit of information about you, but nothing essential.
damn.. not first :( lemme watch first then -edit- so.. i'm done watching. why the drive partition isn't detected is most likely caused by the encryption that were done by the chips. so, the new question is, will the partition detected if we put the drive directly to the SATA port after this mod? please do try and let us know! :D
Yes, that's correct. Files written with that chip enabled were encrypted, but now that board is working as SATA bridge without any encrpytion. Also that HDD could have been Hitachi one because HGST is subsidiary of Western Digital. That can also explain why Hitachi HDD worked fine with My Book PCB.
15fakeaccount hmm.. i'll try to attach toshiba drive on my wd book tomorrow and let's see if it's recognized or not wait.. no. i've used seagate drive long time ago on this board.. it works just fine
Hi 15fakeaccount Thank You very much! for this awesome ninja trick,, you are mentioned in the description,, I had time to find your comment doing editing.... and "15fakeaccount" it a really bad name for a shout out :-( but thanx.. Thank you for watching! :-)
Hi Mark Giblin I do not think so,, I did see one news article stating that form back in 2014,,, but just that one,,, you shout think that this would have been updated : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagate_Technology Thank you for watching! :-)
If you ask google : how much did seagate purchase Western Digital for This is the response you get : Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in HDD drives and storage solutions, and Western Digital Corp. announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement whereby Seagate will acquire WD and its subsidiary HGST in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $16 billion
So, really, you didn't show us anything useful. All you did is prove that if you desolder a chip, a 4tb (or smaller) drive will still work with the 4tb PCB. No useful information was provided in this video. You *need* to show that a larger drive will work or this video was just pointless.
Hi Locutus of Borg Sorry,, I just spend 4 dayes coping data over to that 10TB,, I think it will work,, but I was not brave enough,,yet,, data is being copied off as we type :-) Thank you for watching! :-)
lol a 25c02 serial ram, there was one in every vga monitor so the display card could read the monitor i.d, handy for plug-n-play.
That brand of controller is very common in usb to sata/ide converters.
And a similar serial ram was used to store bios passwords in old laptops.
Hi zx8401ztv
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Thanks for the Chip number... I have about 35 WD My Book for MAC enclosures. Just loaded them with Seagate hard drives and put them to work on my PC network. The chip was located elsewhere on the board. It says Winbond but has the same number. Located the dot on the chip corner and cut the leg off using a pair of Revlon Toe Nail clippers... the pliar type clippers. Realy good tool for doing small electronic work. - Bada Bing! Now the enclosures all work with 4 TB sea-gate 10,000 RPM drives. The usb 3.0 works really fast connected to my main 3.0 USB to Gigabit LAN adapter base. Now I have over 130 TB of storage on my network using these enclosures and FREE NAS.
I use the FREE NAS 7.0 from about 9 years ago. Has a built in webserver. Can sling them video to anyone now without a need for expensive storage.
It's generally a flash chip near the brain. On a Mybook 25EE, it was pins 7 & 8 of a winbond which had to be lifted. It didn't destroy the data. Might be easier & more consistent to just desolder the entire chip.
Hi Lion McLionhead
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
As others have mentions, all that chip does is the crappy WD stuff like encryption, and messes with the partition tables (hence the 2Tb showed up as unallocated). Helpful for identifying which disk is which, but not much use otherwise. By isolating that chips power, you have essentially turned that WD printed board into a generic USB3.0 to SATA board. It would be safe to connect to the 10Tb drive. Now you know that chip, when un powered, doesn't affect the operation of the PCB, I'd go ahead and desolder the chip so there is less chance of it shorting. :) A hot air station would make short work of removing the chip.
Hi dash8brj
Thank You very much! I did also think it would be safe to connect the 10TB disk,, but after 3 days of copying the data,, I chickened out and took the safe way... :-/ glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Thanks - I have a 2Gb MyBook and replaced the drive with a 4Gb one. They MyBook would only recognise 2Gb. Now disconnected the power lead from the chip and.... bingo ... I now have 4Gb available from a Seagate drive.
Super tip, well presented, thanks.
Very happy I could help!
Propably you had to reformat because the chip had the key in it for the encryption. So you should be now safe without chip for the 10TB drive.
Hi TechnikmitBen
Thank You very much! I think so to,, but did not want to run that chance,,, yet :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I think that if you try an hard drive , partitioned and loaded with data on a regular pc, you will be able to see all the data and work with it. The data on that drive has disappeared because it was initialized with that chip into the game, that make some non standard initialization/partition of the drive. Cutting out the chip was resulting in a unreadable hard drive. You can put a switch on that desoldered pin and play with it alot :-)
Hi MVVblog
Maybe a magnetic switch,, if any one moves your box away from the little magnet it stands on, it will be unreadable.
Thank you for watching! :-)
Sweeeeet! The board you have in the VID is for the 2TB version at least that's what mine had, followed your instructions and worked perfect. I also have a 4tb board and a 6tb board, lifted the legs on the same chip BUT BOTH Pin 7 and 8 have to be done on those boards. Thank you so much. I've been gonna toss the old cases for awhile so glad I found your vid before I did! Thank you.
Hi @danielmackey7186
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I also found that if you just remove the chip entirely it also works, my model had multiple inputs for power so I just removed the chip entirely and now I can use it with any drive.
Thank you for the info.
possibly similar to the hp externals the chip plays with drive layout. the data may not be encrypted but that chip and its process sits between the os and the drive.
Usually they place small bits of data on the drive and the chip hides it but when you get raw drive access like removing the disk from the enclosure the data and partition tables are not where they are suppose to be.
If you try a drive loaded over a sata cable or generic usb-sata with the modded board all the data should show fine as its now direct access. its not 100% that the 10tb wont be corrupted as thats a rather large drive and most nas's have a 4tb limit somewhere.
why is your iscsi so slow it cant push 24mb/sec?(usb2's soft limit)
Agree, some controllers are evil. I have a pair of Seagate enclosures what tamper with the drive identification block size. As a result, the sector numbers in the GPT become incorrect, and a 4k sector drive initialized by the enclosure does not work on plain sata.
Hi 88djdmepfdnkjf94
Thank You very much! The USB2 limit was like 35MB/s,, but iSCSI was only 25-30MB/s,, I do not know and want to find out,, but need to keep data safe first.
Thank you for watching! :-)
Very cool, and glad to find this on a trusted channel - 622 and you're latest video is 1139 - keep the playhouse going!
Hi Ian Major
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I tried mine (8TB Elements) with an 8TB barracuda drive and works without any modification. Putting it back in the case is a different story because the rubber thingies does not fit the barracuda.
Okay,, be aware that the WD box does some funny stuff to the data on the disk,, so without modifying it, you will not be able to read the data without the box.
Thanks for the video! Does it spin down after a while? I read somewhere else that after disabling pin 8 it no longer spins down...
Ps. You remind of the actor Bill Paxton... :)
I disabled pin 8 of the winbond chip on the Sata-to-USB3 PCB of my WD Mybook 8TB but it still shows "WD My Book 25EE USB Device" when connecting even with a different harddisk attached to it... strange. Needs some further investigation apparently.
Ok, I disabled pin 7 & 8 on the "Winbond 25X20CLV1G 1826" chip and now it's working. It shows as "ASMT 2115 USB Device". The disk is readable as if directly attached to a normal sata connection. Great!
Hi nekron75
Yes I have also heard that it will not spin down,, not that I have tested it,, as I do not really need that... But you might.
,,,Bill Paxton,, Thanx I think!
Working,, good Job! good luck..
Thank you for watching! :-)
Does this also break other firmware features like spin down? Mine seems to spin constantly after I removed pin 8.
Other also says this,, so I do believe that might be through as well.
Same here on MacOS. I disconnected pin 8 to get the new hard drive to show up. I'm also seeing my Mac won't boot when the hacked WD My Book is attached.The drive continues spinning after powering off the mac. So it appears this IC handles those features as well...
which solder are you using? I've tried looking into soldering but wasn't sure what equipment to get
It's a Weller,, kind of a name brand,, You can get a lot for $50-70
Has anyone found a way to recover data after removing the encryption board and start using the drive in a SATA to USB Dock?
Maybe just put it back..
Legend. This just worked for me. So very grateful! Thank you.
Thank you very much! I am glad I could help!
I have the blu ring WD My Book, it will work in this uni?
Sorry,, I do not know..
TH-cam is messing up, and climes that I have not replied to this,, sorry for the "disturbance in the force" :-/
i have 2 of such wd drives.One is old and dead.The other one bit more newer(couple years)but also in the proces of dying!.(Errors etc)I have had it with these wd mybooks! Now i have seagate baracuda 1tb for 50€
Hi Govert Jansen
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Interesting. Have you gone back to finish this test? Did you try removing and adding the 2TB hard drive again to the same interface?
Hi Chris Moore
I really do not remember,, but I never got to test it with bigger drives.
Thank you for watching! :-)
so did you try with a 6 gig drive then ?
Hi dtec30
Sorry,, I do not have one,,
Thank you for watching! :-)
so we wont know for sure if it really worked then bummer
You mean 6 terabyte?
yes good spot there lol mental failure i need raid 5 mental mode
Excellent video - question: after the hack, does the drive then still automatically power on and off with the computer, or does it run constantly? Thanks!
I hear that that is some of the features you lose doing this,, but I did not check,, but I have also heard this.
@@MyPlayHouse thank you, that's what I feared.
It's a good thing you put tape under the chip, it could have pissed all over your hard drive!
Hi Physical Computing
MY thoughts exactly!! :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Im using two WD My Book USB enclosures with non-WD HDDs on Synology. The controller with disabled Winbond 25X20 chip, controller become with 000000000000000000000 serial number and Synology not recognizing between two enclosures, and most time crashing Synology. Question is any way to avoid this? Probably not. The purpose of this chip not only preventing from using non WD HDD but also to translate HDD numbers with the chip to the computer to make every enclosure unique.
Well I guess this hack is just not good for your need,, I think you need at least another enclosure for one of your drives. :-/
Shows U2 on the board next to the chip you are pointed to
Sorry this video is rather old,, and I am on 926 videos,, what are we talking about ?
@@MyPlayHouse Video 622: it seems you weren't 100% positive of which chip to mod and you mentioned something about U2 being on the chip but it actually says beside the chip on the board. Interesting mod to put older drives in the my book wonder if it would allow the original drive to go back in place but I guess it would be recognized as the actual drive instead of MyBook which was the purpose of the hack to begin with.
My bet would actually be that the reason your computer didn't see the partition and data on the old hard drive after the mod is the fact that this little nasty "My Book" chip did that. So you could try using that 2TB drive in the USB 2.0 enclosure, format it there, copy data onto it and then look if the modified USB 3.0 board still sees the data. I bet it is still there, because now the USB to SATA bridge seems to work just like any other normal USB to SATA bridge, instead of being something yucky made by WD to lock the customer out.
Hi Seegal Galguntijak
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I was thinking it would be fun to use like a CH341A programmer & make a firmware dump of that 8-pin IC. Then examine it to find if like the SN of the HDD is hard coded into the firmware of that IC. Thus preventing the enclosure's PCB controller to accept other HDDs (as either replacements or upgrades)... 🤔😎🙄
If it becomes to hard, normal people cant do it,, and it is less fun :-/
always like before watching, :)
Hi Unkyjoe's Playhouse
Thank You very much! But what if I am rubbish :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Thanks for posting this video. I was scratching my head on why my wd black 2TB was not working in my old wd mybook enclosure. I desoldered the entire chip and now everything works. The only thing I can't figure out is the power button as it does nothing. I have to physically unplug it.
Hi Gary Y
Thank You very much! also someone said that sleep mode will be disabled - glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
i tried this and it gives me the same error. the chip you refer to is a winbond 25x20clv16 flash nand memory chip. its programmed to only recognize the previous drive, or a drive of certain size. to do this right, you'll need software to reprogram the chip to clear it.
That would be too much to make out of this..
I would like to thank you. I follow-up your video and it works just fine.
You're welcome! I do enjoy making videos helping people,, and especially with little ninja tricks like this!
Hey,
Great info. Man I could acquire a bunch of these enclosures with all the parts on the cheap - make the mod & resell them at a higher price. 🤔😉😆
But everyone pretty much avoides the WD External Hard Drives as such because of the needles encryption that they apply. 😣
Hi David Bolha
Thank You very much! This removes that encryption,, glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
The Chip you have desoldered was a TPM and a capacity chip. The chip can be reprogrammed :D
How?
@@andreihossu2749 he was just talking BS there's no way to flash a new firmware onto it without proprietary hardware and software to do it yourself
Hi Snowwolf LP
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Don't try this on the version with the squared board, disconnect PIN 8 has no effect, additionally disconnect PIN 7 will render the board unusable.
Hi Leonardo
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
squared board?
@@Skana Yes, like in the Elements disk that he also has about 1 minute into the movie.
Recent 8TB MyBook purchases here. Attempted this mod. U5 seems to be the same chip on this particular PCB. After removing the leg, no power at all. This may be because I also tried removing the appropriate leg on U2 first as described, but that made no difference. So it seems that WD have changed the PCB to prevent this mod from being possible, more likely the chip needs to be reprogrammed. Basically f**k WD.
They try to control how users use their products all the time.. It's not always smart,, often they will sell more of a thing that can be ninja hacked,,
@@MyPlayHouse I have two, already shucked the drives and using them in a NAS. So the usb pcb was no great loss AFAIC but it's basically encouraging e-waste.
I was hoping to reuse them for a Pi NAS project. Now I'm going to have to buy new enclosures. WD be WD. Shame that Seagate are no better.
Mine had a winbond 25x20clvig 1738. with pin 8 lifted it did not work, so I did what (nekron75) said pin 7&8 then it worked :) but as people thought would not spin down :( it also it also seems it would not park the heads. then I removed the chip as (Jonathan Sanchez) said no change. I don't think it safe to use if it wont park the heads, its the same as if it lost power your just not reading/writing
I just use mine for connecting a drive copy some data and off again,,, you are probably right, that it should not be trusted for longer times.
@@MyPlayHouse I believe Most if not all drives park the heads off the platters so they do not get stuck to them and either fail to spin up or damage the heads and platter surface , Thats why i think it is a bad idea to use it.
The heads are parked automatically, that's not a problem, you need to safely disconnect the disk from the system, then the writing will not be delayed and it is possible to safely disconnect the power supply without losing data. Just the constant spinning of the disc will cause premature wear, but even the discs are adapted for this.
I have re-used a few enclosures. Did a couple times at work had 2 mybooks die over the summer, one I threw a 1TB HDD in seemed to work, but ghost didn't like it for some reason. Many of these cases are a pain to open, etc though. The best external I dealt with was a 2TB samsung story station. Metal/plastic case, screwed together. Everything now is all plastic and snap together =(. Got a 3TB toshiba canvio and a pair of Seagate 8TB HDD that are just plastic.
Hi jtech0
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Ok so my question is, I have a 1TB drive with a bunch of data on it. If I desolder pin 8 I won't lose my data ????
Yes and NO,,, if your data is put on the disk with pin 8 connected,, you will not be able to read the data if you desolder pin 8,,, but data is still there.
@@MyPlayHouse then this won't work. I'm trying to retrieve my data from the drive. I saw another video that talks about some unblocker software but I went to the WD site and didn't see this. I downloaded what was for unlocking drives but it didn't work.
When I disconnected the pin, the hard drive does not spin up.
My device is a WD MyBook 1130
This worked on the one in the video,,, I do not know about other models.
Thanks for the advice.
You bet! Best of luck...
i dont have in my book chip U2 I have U4 & U5 & U6 ???
Yes they have change it,, not long ago someone commede a solution.
just get a synology 2 disk nas and plug it in :)
He is using the disk to transfer the data to another location, a NAS would be a bit overkill for that.
Hi David's Music
Yes,, the data is right now being copied over on a Synology 1813
Thank you for watching! :-)
How many TB does your friends NAS actually have? I mean if he is bragging about it.
Hi David's Music
Well it is a 1813,, and he has 8 x 4TB,, in SHR-2,, there was about 20TB :-) He does not really keep up with what I am doing.
Thank you for watching! :-)
Thank you for producing content! :-) You are the channel that motivated me to get into servers :)
Hi!! very interesentig video!! In my case, the interface got damaged (the one who let you unlock the hard drive) and now Ican't unlock it, do you have any idea how to solve this?
No sorry :-/
didn't work for me... pin 7 is a reset no sure if that was inadvertently tripped by everyone else who did this but when i ripped the pin off i literally ripped the pin out of the chip, so yeah. Still just shows up as a mybook, next step, remove the chip.
Update, removed the chip, works great!
Hi dbzssj4678
Thank You very much! same as remove power to the chip.
Thank you for watching! :-)
Did not work for me, disk cannot be seen. The usb does make a sound as if it connected.
Hi Gary DeSantis
Okay,, :-/ I have been made aware of a power hack on new drives,, on some drives, you have to block the 3.nd power pin on the HD,, google it. might be what you are seeing
Thank you for watching! :-)
... and that worked like a charm on my slightly newer (chip between power and USB port) My Book. I just took a wire cutter and cut the leg off.
Thanks!
Yes, that will work! I wanted to be able to enable the chip again,, if I needed it for filming...
Well done! This still works!
Someone had trouble with new versions.
you must have a billion sata drives larger than 4tb that you could have tested this out on...??
Why didn't you try on one of those Morten?
Hi Roderick Roderick
Thank You very much! But NO,, I do not have large drives not in use.
Thank you for watching! :-)
A friend of mine would have loved to known that trick since he had a couple of those and they went in the trash.
Hi Scott Downey
Thank You very much! Well I learned about it last week,, I did not sit on it for long.. one of the good things about reading all the comments,,, there are a lot of you that are very smart ,and have small trick like this.
Thank you for watching! :-)
The heck is 'the print'? Pcb perhaps?
Hi kc0eks
Printplade (PCB - eng. Printed Circuit Board)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Should of been WD Red drives in there, that's what mine had
Mark i got WD Greens in mine
Red, green, gold, purple, black, it doesn't matter.
I do not understand..
works for me, saved 20 euro, thank you
Hi Matze Doge
Thank You very much! Awesome! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Can it work with a ssd?
Hi ofir aviel
,,, why,, this is a box for a 3.5",, SSD's are uselessly 2.5" and do not need 12volt,, and a big box ?
Thank you for watching! :-)
My PlayHouse I just wandered if it will work, anyway, thank you for your reply
Should work fine. Seems a bit silly though, you can get 2.5" generic SATA > USB3 cases for about US$10 on Amazon, and no need for external power. As far as that goes, generic 3.5" cases are about the same price, and you don't have to bother messing around with Western Dataloss hardware. Maybe if you're in a hurry and have one sitting around...
Honestly why would western digital even put that restriction on ? You have to put a different config rom on every version of the product for each size! That has to cost money !!!
Hi Andrew Joy
Money,, they must be making more somehow... :-/
Thank you for watching! :-)
I never heard anyone refer to a pcb as a print before.
Hi gamerdude0
Printplade (PCB - eng. Printed Circuit Board)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Very nice job and video :D
Hi LAZERS4
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Fun video ..I also liked before watching
Hi Relaxing Nature
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video before watching,,, and hopefully forgot to unlike :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
USB 2.0 was the bottleneck. Hard drives max out at around 35 MB/s on 2.0.
Hi Matt Garner
Thank You very much! but I was only getting 25-30MB/s from the iSCSI SAN,,, and that coping to my SSD.
Thank you for watching! :-)
Thanks - because i have some My Books - so i can try this "mod".
Hi specialpaul
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Well that didn't work. Disconnected leg 8 then tried it with leg 7 disconnected and ....... Nothing! Still can't be found and the legs are too small for me to resolder :(
It's the power leg to the chip,, I am still using mine,, as late as yesterday I had it in use.
after i done the WD save money trick. i didnt keep the controller card. CRAP, i should have kept it ! LOL
Hi MrOne2watch
Well who know,,, :-/
Thank you for watching! :-)
Nice Video, i have Wd Blue HDDs from WD-Elements, that was the cheap way for 8x4TB Raid 24/7 working.
Germany :)
Hi tak tik
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
ahh good old WD
Hi BenJaminL11
he he Good or Old,, make up your mind :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Useful, thanks.
Hi tjousk
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Awsome, I might do that
Hi Matthew Landon
well it is one more option.
Thank you for watching! :-)
I think that chip, or I think it is supposed to be called IC, is important and without it there will be a serious problem.
Stores the drive config data. Like name, some info about the drive, no firmware or stuff like that. Basically is like your nametag, it has a bit of information about you, but nothing essential.
Hi Fikri Noh
Thank You very much! but it seams that with out it you have less problems.
Thank you for watching! :-)
damn.. not first :(
lemme watch first then
-edit-
so.. i'm done watching. why the drive partition isn't detected is most likely caused by the encryption that were done by the chips. so, the new question is, will the partition detected if we put the drive directly to the SATA port after this mod? please do try and let us know! :D
S. Kojina was awesome, not first!
Yes, that's correct. Files written with that chip enabled were encrypted, but now that board is working as SATA bridge without any encrpytion.
Also that HDD could have been Hitachi one because HGST is subsidiary of Western Digital. That can also explain why Hitachi HDD worked fine with My Book PCB.
15fakeaccount hmm.. i'll try to attach toshiba drive on my wd book tomorrow and let's see if it's recognized or not
wait.. no. i've used seagate drive long time ago on this board.. it works just fine
Hi 15fakeaccount
Thank You very much! for this awesome ninja trick,, you are mentioned in the description,, I had time to find your comment doing editing.... and "15fakeaccount" it a really bad name for a shout out :-( but thanx..
Thank you for watching! :-)
No problem at all! After all it wasn't even my video.
FYI, Seagate bought out Western Digital.
They paid something like $16 Billion...
Hi Mark Giblin
I do not think so,, I did see one news article stating that form back in 2014,,, but just that one,,, you shout think that this would have been updated : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagate_Technology
Thank you for watching! :-)
If you ask google :
how much did seagate purchase Western Digital for
This is the response you get :
Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in HDD drives and storage solutions, and Western Digital Corp. announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement whereby Seagate will acquire WD and its subsidiary HGST in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $16 billion
like before watch :-) ooh. and first... :-D
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So, really, you didn't show us anything useful. All you did is prove that if you desolder a chip, a 4tb (or smaller) drive will still work with the 4tb PCB. No useful information was provided in this video.
You *need* to show that a larger drive will work or this video was just pointless.
Hi Locutus of Borg
Sorry,, I just spend 4 dayes coping data over to that 10TB,, I think it will work,, but I was not brave enough,,yet,, data is being copied off as we type :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)