WD my passport USB harddisk case opening. The drive has no SATA interface anymore

In this video I disassamble a WD Passport external harddrive. As You can see, the WD drives have no SATA interface anymore. So an internal use for a desktop PC is not possible,

[@brettygud2475]

i don't understand a lick of german but VIELEN DANK, dude. i was trying to figure out if these drives were regular SATA and clearly they aren't. you seem to be literally the only person to disassemble this drive.

[@lukystreik]

+steves6632205 Thank You for your feedback. That's why i make those videos. Only after disassembling it becomes obvious what's inside the black (in this case red 😂) box. This is often not that, what you would expect 🤔

[@lukystreik]

+steves6632205 at the end I assume ( with no absolute guarantee), that the classic slightly bigger WD Elements drives are the last and only native SATA drives from WD.

[@peterwilliams7287]

all seagate externals are sata i opened them for my ps4

[@TimothyxG]

Peter Williams could you explain how to expose the sata connecter?

[@edwardcullen3251]

@@peterwilliams7287 yeah. Explain. This drive clearly isn't. They have a custom pcb which allows them to have only the USB port

[@KevinThompson1611]

This video just saved me $120. I bought it to use it as a sata hard drive and remove it from the casing. I'm glad I watched this. I was able to take it back and get a refund and purchase a product from elsewhere that was sata.

[@lukystreik]

+Kevin Thompson Thanks for Your feedback!

[@peterwilliams7287]

all seagate externals hdd are sata even the the slim ones,the sata connector has a 3.0 adapter/controller

[@lukystreik]

+Peter Williams Ok interesting! Thanks for Your feedback

[@TimothyxG]

Peter Williams could you elaborate on this adapter? How do you remove it from the unit to expose the sata connector?

[@DJZKOfficial]

the internal Western Digital drive costs lower than that so why buy it and disassemble for SATA Interface mounting.

[@odinKoS]

Thank you, you saved me tearing it apart myself to find out it wasn't a standard SATA. You ROCK!!!

[@drewbadwolf5182]

I was pissed lol

[@jjones5083]

Thanks very much. I bought a WD red drive like this in May 2020. It's spent most of the time in the safe and comes out for a back up every 3 months or so. So after very few uses it's failed. Your video shows there is little to be gained by trying to fit a SATA drive from a better brand inside the case.

[@dexterjsullen]

even though you didn't speak English, you pretty much answered everyone question, especially regarding the drive connection interface

[@lukystreik]

thanks for your feedback. At that time I didn’t know, how much people from other countries are interested in my video. I’m impressed, how many feedbacks I get from foreign followers. The next hardware disassembly I should prefer english 😎

[@russell88887]

I was so close to buying this so I could remove from case and use as a laptop drive, thank you for saving me from that mistake!

[@charleshines6155]

Even if you could it is a thicker drive. I was looking into this myself and found that out from a different disassembly video.

[@MrBitviper]

I was gonna buy this but thanks to you now I know it doesn't come with sata thanks man.... you've been a great help :)

[@usernamepleasehere]

Danke! Gerade überlegt wie ich das Ding öffne, das kann ich mir jetzt sparen.

[@Zel912]

thankyou. You save me. Most external harddrive fails because of usb board. In this case, no sata means no recovery if usb board fails..

[@lukystreik]

thank You for your feedback :)

[@charleshines6155]

Other drives still come as a SATA drive but with a removable adapter that makes them USB. I like that even better because you can use the drive for anything even a laptop drive if you want but with just SATA you are very limited. I have noticed some pins on the drive that are not the USB connector. I would like to get a complete pinout for those. You can see them at 3:15 next to the USB connector. There looks to be 6 connectors there. They don't look like they are for jumpers. I would like to know if they are usable in some way and just not a standard SATA connector that we would recognize. Not sure how it would get power other than the USB port though. It is possible they are used at the factory.

[@Charlottewhereareyou]

this dude literatly saved me 100$ thank you!

[@chadcarlson7841]

This is the ONLY hard drive I have ever had fail and I can't recover anything because of their propriety bullshit. Sending them some hate mail. Light comes on but nothing is recognized.

[@iam_joshua_bcxvii]

thank god I got curious and checked for myself. TUrns out there was no SATA interface anymore. I was going to use the drive as an external enclosure when the drive fails in the next few years. I guess I'm gonna go back to buying another seagate slim drive.

[@nithitpiriyasathit6161]

Thanks for the information! I'm going to buy it soon. But after I watch this video, I won't buy it 😍😭😎😂

[@Symphonial]

Vielen danke fur deine video ! I planned to put this disk in my PC (it's currently on my PS4 but 2Tb is a bit short) but since we can't unmount it, I will let it on my PS4 and sort my games, and but a 2.5 Seagate someday for my PC

[@Jason75913]

Thanks for the video, very helpful.

[@ItsKapow]

Thank you. Might buy a Seagate drive so I can install it in my PC.

[@EdwardMcAndrew]

Thank you Gustav!

[@dreew738]

Danke schön 😄

[@lukystreik]

Bitte :)

[@dimkahardwarexpert5874]

I bought that HHD. There are 4 rubber pads on the bottom of the HDD. If I put HDD on the smooth surface (table), one of the 4 rubber pads doesn't contact with table and HDD is little bit stagger. Do you have that problem?

[@stixen92]

Hi, How much MB of cache for this disk? 64MB or 128 MB? Thanks

[@HifiCentret]

It really suck that WD doesn't make any 4TB sata drive. I don't know whether I'll trust Seagate. I've never ever had a 2,5" WD fail. But for some reason I've only found 2TB drives. Even the slim 7mm variant - I don't need such a slim drive. 15 mm would be fine. But no WD doesn't offer that. It sucks :/ But hey thank you for saving me 950 DKK just to be disappointed !

[@chrisflowers-smoker154]

This Video answered a Question I had about the Drives. Messed up that we cant use them for Internal Drives anymore >:( .

[@charleshines6155]

Not WD Passport drives anyhow. I hope this trend dies when WD wakes up some day and realizes we like to have a drive that is SAS or SATA so we can reuse it for other things. I just hope that WD's competitors keep things standard. There are people who bought these and when they stop working they have no way to get their data back. They thought that the drive was SATA internally but made this horrifying discovery when they tried to recover their files from them. There does seem to be some sort of connector near the USB connector but what is it? It looks like 6 pins.

I bought that WD HDD 8 months ago. It doesn't work now and it says I/O failure. Can I recover my info taking out the disc from case?

[@lukystreik]

no the controller is onboard

Gustav Ludewig Thanks

[@mama9048]

Are external drives even worth it? Warranty is usually less and you don't know what type of drive your getting inside. Its cheaper in most cases to buy a SATA drive on its own and add a cheap external case from Amazon then you know what drive your getting.

[@robertmondon9535]

Hi. Please help me. Would the inside of the 4tera look like that of the 2T? Somebody broke mine and returned only the internal and it looks weird i have nothing to compare it to, even the sticker is missing.

[@lukystreik]

can you send me a picture, so that i can figure out the problem ? forum at group44 de

[@jimirayvaughan5767]

Ouch! Just like that, there goes 15 years of WD loyalty. My USB connector seems to be broken, thought I could fix or at least still use the drive. Now a perfectly good disk is garbage thanks to planned obsolescence, stinginess and cheap parts.

[@DAWGOFWAR]

How do I get to the arm or whatever is keeping the hard drive from spinning up?

[@lukystreik]

If you open the drive to check, if it is fixable, you will destroy it.

[@DAWGOFWAR]

@@lukystreik well I removed panel but I didn’t like open open it up

[@AmirZaimMohdZaini]

Well...that's the secret why this external drive size is nearly identical with typical 2.5" HDD. Usually, external drives are bit longer than 2.5" size. And oh yes...external HDD made from my country...but sadly WD planned to shut down another HDD factory in my country...

[@mattze3756]

Ich bräuchte eine externe Festplatte mit acht Terabyte. Was für eine könntest du empfehlen?

[@Headhunterzify]

Try Seagate. I bought the Slim version. They still have SATA ports.

[@charleshines6155]

Even a non slim one might still have SATA ports. WD is the only one I know of making these weird USB only drives.

[@gaurabghosh6670]

I have this same model of wd my passport. Whenever i move or shake the drive it seems like the internal drive is loose and moving. Is it a manufacturing fault? Should I replace it or it's normal?

[@lukystreik]

The drive is mounted in rubber brackets. It should not rattle, if You shake it.

[@gaurabghosh6670]

Gustav Ludewig thank you so much for the reply. I have already placed a request for replacement. Hope it gets approved.

[@fadelkhalifahibrahim4763]

how do you can open the case of HD?

[@Odinochka1986]

Wanted to buy this hdd because of 3year warranty, but now I see that this junk will be unrepairable if controller will fail, will go with seagate backup plus with 2 year warranty, but at least in videos in youtube it's shown that you can easily remove sata2usb controller and use it as regular inner hdd

[@overclockedlife7550]

Why unrepairable ?

[@Odinochka1986]

Overclocked Life external hdds is usually simple hdd with sata2usb controller. All power and all data go to this controller. Which means that if some part of this controller will be broken whole external hdd will be unusable. However even with brojen controller inner hdd will be probably ok, so if your warranty is over you just remove case and remove controller and get simple hdd which you can connect to any pc with sata and power cord (it's truth for seagate external hdds). However WD build this controller inside hdd (its soldered) which means that if controller will fail whole your hdd will be failed too and you will not easily remove controller. Also acordingly to my research WD even changes data ttansfer pins on hdds from revision to revision which makes repair ultimately complex and dangerous.

[@overclockedlife7550]

Odinochka1986 I canceled my order. I'll buy 2.5 inch internal drive and hdd box which converts sata to usb. Thanks for your detailed answer & explanation.

[@Odinochka1986]

Overclocked Life no problem, but just to avoid misunderstanding. I didnt recommend you to buy separately hdd and controller (I even never tried that kind of setup), I recommended to not to buy particular model WD MyPassport because of this issue. There are other external hdds (f.e. seagate backup plus portable) where controller isnt soldered and can be deattached manually. These kind of processes can be found by searching in youtube smth like %MODEL% disassembling. But its void warranty of course. So its just to clarify my position. Personally I bought seagate model and I can tell that it has good stable 130mb/s, but it is +/- hot with temps like 43-46.

[@edwardcullen3251]

The main issue with this is that port is only held onto the board. Nothing else supports it. Regular connect disconnect of the USB port (this IS a portable drive after all), will mean the port breaks the pcb where it's soldered on. Then you're fucked. You can't access your data because there's no sata and power ports. Get a different external drive and Google Search the name of the drive AND add inside and look at images and videos. Example 'western digital my passport inside'

[@yankeebisbis]

Very bad drives and if the usb port break, bye bye drive. I wouldn't buy this even if it was $10 and I don't recommend people to buy these until western digital follow seagate way of providing proper sata connector.

[@CappnRob]

ahhhh AHHHHHH i bought one of these some time ago, and now it wont read on my computer, but still powers on I bought a SATA connection thinking I could use that to get my data back, but LO AND BEHOLD I open it andsee this. I wish I found this video when buying this harddrive some time ago, fucking hell. Reccomendations for alternatives to WD, friend? Because I can't stand that this happened.

[@CappnRob]

@@gedeo I did, turns out my problem was the USB connector

[@syncmonism]

I was just curious to see what was inside one of these. What a funny looking hard drive. Seems like a great product though. 3 year warranty on an affordable and very compact 4TB external hard drive? Yes please! ^_^

[@twilightonair]

Hello , thanks for this video ... i have a question ... wd 3 tb hdd model number is (WDBBKD0030BWT) ... do you think this 3 tb and your 4 tb have same chipset ? because i open my 3 tb wd and i see that it is looking almost same ... my 3 tb have some problem but still working and i think it is about chipset .. i want to buy a 4 gb (because chipset looking almost same) and change chipset , copy my files and after try to repair my 3 gb wd .... thanks for help ...

[@lukystreik]

Hello, this method was very common in the 1980 and 90‘ but with the newer drives the PCB is not changeable anymore. There is drive specific information in the onboard flash. A PCB exchange would permanently damage your drive.

[@lukystreik]

www.hddzone.com/western_digital_pcb_swap_replacement_guide.html

[@twilightonair]

@@lukystreik thank you for info ...

[@iamjohnmichaeltan]

May board po ba sa charging port na nabibili? 🥺

[@muhammadsahid1901]

Thanks

[@dkonly1]

Und welche externe 2,5 Zoll Festplatte hat heutzutage eine SATA Schnittstelle??

[@lukystreik]

Lt. anderen Comments hat wohl Seagate noch nicht umgestellt. Generell kann man sagen, wenn die Gehäuse verdächtig klein sind, wird es wohl eine native USB sein. Ansonsten muss ja hinter der eigentlichen Platte noch ca 0,5-1cm Platz sein für einen SATA2USB Controller. Die WD Elements haben scheinbar "noch" die bisherige Technik mit SATA + Controller. Die my passport Dinger auf keinen Fall

[@dkonly1]

Hmm. dann bleib nur noch Segate, weil WD Elements keine SATA+ Controller mehr haben :( www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f15/wd-elements-portable-se-platte-defekt-aber-controller-angeloetet-datenrettung-891516.html

[@lukystreik]

+Dkonly Dkonly vermutlich noch Seagate und die Bulk Ware von Intenso

[@BVLVI]

Thanks!

[@Pertamax7-HD]

No sata as usual

[@AmirZaimMohdZaini]

Just check and compared to typical 2.5" SSD, and found it the drive size is nearly identical. And yeah...no SATA port, it just uses USB 3.1 port directly. Sorry for deleting my previous reply, there's some mistake.

[@syarifairlangga4608]

Why they use usb port. It basically unrepairable. Sata port iscneeded if the drive reach end of life

[@darrenforster99]

Wow that's pretty bad - just took the cover off mine as I intended to swap the 2tb drive for the 1tb drive in my PS4 so the bigger drive is internal and the smaller drive external and then I was like wtf??? where's the sata connection on this drive... what a crap trick to pull >:( next time I need an external drive I'm going to build one myself rather than use WDs pre-built drives - one icy box and a 2.5" drive much better than this design!

[@johnhoward8362]

thank you for the video, one question which color is the best

[@lukystreik]

+John Howard choose Your poison 😝 The color of the case doesn't matters. It is only a question of Your personal preferences.

[@abhitrying]

the blue and red colour options look cheap, go for black

[@iqbalhelsen852]

LOL ;-)

[@boxsterin]

Idiot.

[@dmitritobias]

it's already goddamn opened

[@SinRitual]

So we cannot change the drive and save at least the plastic box...so those drives are totally shit. Glad i bought only the low end 1 TB version of this shit, broken after 5 months of not actually using it.

[@lukystreik]

that’s the point. Those USB only drives are garbage

[@SinRitual]

@@lukystreik sad thing is that Western Digital is using his famous brand to sell this shit on the market, i had an old monolitic WD passport... it was completely another thing... so i trusted the brand and got pretty fucked up with this one...

[@lukystreik]

@@SinRitual most common manufacturers these days uses USB controlled drives in budget segments

[@SinRitual]

@@lukystreik it's worst for them, i will ask for another new drive because of the guarantee; :D

[@edwardcullen3251]

English title but German language. Don't do that.

[@NoName-male1968]

In Germany it is Hip to Speak Denglisch ;-) unboxing, opening, chilling ... German people are very very Crazy!

[@luwk]

How about everyone rip into wd over this propriety usb to what ever adapter and get local consumers laws on them. Data recovery people would be pissed off at western digital

[@charleshines6155]

I would be somewhat upset if I used this to backup any important files or pictures and had it fail. A drive used for backup purposes should be something that is made with standard parts and not strange proprietary ones that could make data recovery difficult and even more expensive that it already is. Imagine someone losing his tax documents because of one of these things. He thought he made a backup but he had no idea what a horrible time he will have getting his files back. I do have WD hard drives and they have been reliable but none of them have a permanent USB connector like this. Now that hard drives are being made this way I will look to see the disassembly videos to see what is inside them before I even leave my house to get one.

[@gokukn2336]

what language you are speaking..?? :\

[@lukystreik]

german with hessian accent

[@lukystreik]

if you have a specific question feel free to ask me

[@boxsterin]

Only idiots dont know the supreme language when they hear it. Idiot.

[@1anunaki]

68

[@adhiyaksa4959]

Thanks