WD My Book Studio Edition 500GB won't mount

I had success with a friend's WD external which had stopped mounting. The drive itself was fine. I removed it from the WD enclosure, which had gone bad (I think the WD external chipsets are of very poor quality) and put it in one of these. All the data was still there.

Getting it out wasn't difficult. The plastic cover has to be pried open -- just work slowly and carefully; you don't want to bang or jar the drive. Putting it in the OWC enclosure took all of twenty minutes or less.

I don't know how old the WD external is. I would think it's extremely unlikely its an ATA/IDE drive; I don't think they even came as big as 500GB, probably much smalller. Those were discontinued a long time ago. It's almost certainly a SATA 3.5" drive. But when I did this, I called WD first to confirm that the drive was SATA 3.5". Any SATA 3.5" drive, no matter what brand, will work with this enclosure.

If you do a search for WD MyBook "take apart" or "remove drive," you will get a number of hits with illustrated directions for removal. You might not find directions specifically for your model, but what you will find, even with variations, will give you the general idea. You just pry open the plastic case deliberately with a flat blade screwdriver and then proceed to remove the various screws. The whole operation took about a half hour.

Once out, you just slide the drive into the OWC enclosure -- no connectors to worry about -- and close it back up. It couldn't be simpler.

EDIT: to prevent static electriciy from possibly wrecking the drive, just be careful not to touch the drive contacts or the circuit board.

Message was edited by: WZZZ

One more thing, if you're still reading this. Try getting an enclosure with an Oxford chipset (probably Oxford 934.) They are known for reliability and their compatibility with Macs.

You're welcome. Naturally, you do understand there's a really excellent chance, based on my own experience and that the My Book enclosures are well known for this, that the reason it won't mount is due to a failure of the enclosure. That your drive is seen by DU also bodes well for success. But you should know there's a very small chance -- I'd bet against it, though -- that it's the drive and this solution won't work.

Please post back when you do this to let me know the result.

Spend a little more and get something decent that will last.

You don't mention whether the drive is visible in Disk Utility? if not, probably the cable, power supply or controller.

When you "did all the checks" did you swap out all the cables?

Did you call WD support, these things are under support for a long time, if the box failed they will send you a new one and you can just take the old disk and put it inside and it will work ... if it has not had corruption. Ask them also to send a new power supply.

I do not think you can just take the drive out and put it in another enclosure, the format of the drive is often different from a bare drive in a system.

One thing you might try it to take the internal drive out, if you can, and plop in a new one, closest you can get ... it's only 500GB ... the closest WD drives of the same line, and see if the box will work ... then you would know only if it works that your disk is what is bad.

Hi Bruxx and WZZZ,

After searching everywhere for an answer, I stumbled upon your advice.

I seem to have a similar issue to the above, but I think I've lost power to my WD 500GB (passport) drive as the light won't flicker or come on anymore. I plugged it into a multiple USB connector which had the wrong power supply connected to it.

If I pick up the same enclosure and drop the drive in once i remove it from the WD enclosure, do you think it would work for me? or do i have to do something more?

MacBraveheart, I agree, this is just very stressful. I too cannot lose my data on this drive. It's waaaay too precious.

Thanks and look forward to your response.

Regards,

Chris