Shucking Western Digital My Book 8 TB WDBBGB0080HBK-EESN

I just bought 2 Western Digital My Book 8 TB for EUR 157,55 each (incl. 25% VAT because communist Swede here) from amazon.de. The goal was to extract the drives and insert them as regular SATA drives into my home server for extra storage.

I figured I could share how I did this without destroying a single plastic pin on the external enclosure.First, I cut two stripes from a Coca Cola bottle. I made these slightly shorter than the width of the WD enclosure (kind of hard to see in the image)

I then used a flat head screw driver to pry these plastic stripes in the top of the enclosure like this:

And no, that’s not a scratch, just a piece of hair 🙂

These plastic coca cola bottle stripes will “unhook” the plastic clips from each other, making it possible for the enclosure to come apart.

Next thing to do is to flip then enclosure around, take the flat head screw driver and pry along the bottom seem and at the same time, push the inner enclosure uprwards. Like this:

As you move along the edge with the screwdriver you’ll probably notice how the inner part of the enclosure starts to come out and eventually (after moving around the entire edge) it will pop out like this:

Success!

The included drive is a WD80EZAZ (was in both enclosures) and according to this reddit post, it’s a (White label with metal strips) = US7SAL080 = Ultrastar He10-8 SATA (3.3v reset, source WDBBGB0080HBK)

Now we just have to remove the hard drive from the inner enclosure. Notice how the gap between the drive and the plastic surrounding is larger on one side versus the other. To remove the drive, just bend out the plastic “edge” on the side where the gap is largest. While doing this, gently push the drive out like so:

The 4 rubber caps and metal distances on each side of the drive can easily be unscrewed with a set of pliers like so:

Now, unscrew the one Philips head screw holding the usb to sata interface card and when the screw is removed, be sure NOT to lift the card and break the power/sata ports on the drive itself.

Gently push the usb-to-sata interface card straight out in the same direction as you would if you would disconnect a cable from the drive.

Finally free! Now I inserted the drive into my computer to test if I could see it in bios. To bad I did not.

This indicated that my power supply isn’t compatible with the 3.3V pin that exist on these drives.

To fix this, I just cut a piece of electrical tape and covered the 3rd pin. It was hard to get a piece that was thin enough so I made one that covered all 3 first pins. I read somewhere that these aren’t used anyhow so I figures I’ll just try. TL;DR It works just fine! Just be sure to cover the entire 3rd 3.3V pin.

After this, I connected the drive to my computer again. Be gentle so you don’t push the small piece of electrical tape away (try and fold it around the edge to make it stick better).

Here’s a picture after I’ve added both drives to my windows server 2016 storage pool:

And that’s it. Now I have an extra ~16TB of storage for eur 315.10 🙂

Do you have any questions? Just AMA down below.

11 Comments on “Shucking Western Digital My Book 8 TB WDBBGB0080HBK-EESN

  1. Nice job! Thank you a lot for the detailed description. I do have two remarks/tips for others:

    I used plastic open tools, they are meant for this stuff and I do not even have a scuff on the black plastic edge! And instead of the rigid soda-bottle plastic I went for a plastic binder sheet from a brochure.

    You don’t have to use pliers or squeeze the drive out if you use a T10 Torx screwdriver you can just unscrew them as well 🙂

    Good luck!

  2. Hi! Thank you for the tutorial!
    I also bought one from Amazon. I’m curious what kind of server/NAS are you using? Does these drives run very hot cause I’ve read some comments pointing out temperatures of 55 ?
    I intend to build a mini server/NAS with a mini computer from Beelink (intel Gemini platform) with only 6W power consumption but only SATA 3 connections so my intention is to keep the drive in the enclosure to start with. Do you think it will run very hot in the enclosure?

    • Hi Andrei.
      I’m running my storage on windows server 2016 using a i5 2500k, 12gb ram and a pair of hdd’s where all storage drives are formatted with ReFS. The chassis is an old fractal design core 3000 with two fans in the front blowing directly on the hard drives.

      I never tested the disks in the enclosure but I just checked the temps on the server using HWMonitor and they both seem to keep a stable 35 degrees Celsius. I have now idea how much the fans affect these temps.

      My guess is that they’re fine in the enclosure since that’s the actual way they’re sold. Would be weird if WD sold some external HDD that overheated and thus got a shortened life span. Anyhow, try and report the temps! 🙂

  3. Nice tutorial – thumbs up!
    Is it always necessary to modify the 3,3V pin? I would like to use the HDD in a Zyxel NAS326 – do i have to modify the pins of the HDD or will it work without this change?

    Thank you in advance. Best regards…

    • I would recommend you to try without modifying the 3.3v pin heini88. If the HDD doesn’t show up, the try and modify it.
      Best regards.

      • It simply means that the psu has full spec SATA power connectors, meaning that it does deliver 3.3V on correct pins.

        Easiest workaround for this is to buy a Molex -> Sata adapter cable, as it won’t have the 3.3V pins connected because Molex doesn’t have 3.3V pins.

  4. Hi,
    What model is your power supply? To not being compatible with 3.3V.

    Best Regards,
    Stefan

  5. I did this to get a super quiet 8TB drive for my HTPC. To replace my WD Red 8TB. Which was darn noisy. I put the My Book drive in my desktop; super silent. And I put the WD Red in the old My Book enclosure. So now I have a super expensive and noisy backup drive.

  6. These drives are SMR drives. Do not use the in NAS.
    I think TLER is also not activated.

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