Lip-9020 Default Password

[Alexia Borson]

Ifigured out how to open it up. You have to pull the rubber off of it and it will slide open (with some force). I had to completely disconnect the hard drive from the external casing, but I was able to restore all of my data. I put it into my computer and connected it via SATA cable and it works great now.

Well thanks a great deal for the pictures, I finally got it apart. Mine is a little bit different from your drive though. Mine did not have the screw. I just had to push down those two pieces of plastic on the top and bottom and it slid out. Thanks!

Dear SCOTT CRAMER, This is a confirmation that we have received your defective drive for RMA #55555555. The RMA is now closed. If you have any questions about your RMA please reply to this email. If the information is correct, please do not reply back to this email.

I have two My Books, one is the newer triple interface (Firewire 800 etc), the other is the older double interface (USB 2.0 + Firewire). The newer one crashed, taking 500GB of data with it, and Windows was no longer able to even format the disk. Thanks to this blog, I was able to take it apart tonight and mount it in a new machine.

For those who do not find a screw on the outside of the case in order to get started, apparently later versions use snap-on cases. The trick is to pry with your finger tips to see what part of the case lip (the end with the connectors) opens the easiest.

Then with a plastic knife or other similar device, stick it between the opening and run it along the until you feel resistance (you are hitting a tab). Pull out just a bit and then push down and then continue running along the length all the way around the unit.

Unfortunately I snapped a couple of the little plastic clips that hold it together, but nothing that prevents the unit from going back together (but would likely void the warrany.. so beware and be careful.

Mine is a newer model, without the hidden screw hole. Getting into this was similar to iPods or MacMinis (I do a lot of Mac work). There are two small plastic tabs that are hidden by glued on rubber feet on the bottom (the two closest to the LED side of the case. These tabs index into twin little slots. With careful work, you can depress them and slide the case apart.

Alternatively, you can use a putty knife or a black stick to work around the edges of the seams to get things apart without scuffing up the plastic or breaking anything. Neat container, but I wish it was easier to get into.

So mybook 500g essential, essentially quit being able to move copy view the files contained therein although the drive shows up in win xp and lists files, but hangs when trying to open them up. Connected via usb, was working fin earlier today. So when running chksk got the above, hanging at the second stage.

Place the hard drive case upright, with the LED (mines blue and blinks up and down as you access the drive) facing you and the smooth sides of the case at your left and right. The rubber feet should be facing down.

Take a small pocket knife blade and place it just left of center, between the smooth case and the vented case. press down between the two cases about a 16th of an inch. gently continue to apply downward pressure and slowly twist the knife blade and the two halfs of the cases will begin to seperate. when the case opens about a 16th of an inch, you can then reposition the knife blade or use a small screw driver to seperate the case further.

The smooth part of the case should slide all the way forward and off, with out having the vented case move. IF YOU ARE MOVING THE VENTED CASE, YOU ARE USING TO MUCH PRESSURE. Mine was sitting on my keyboard tray and I opened it with just one hand.

wonderful guide. my USB port busted but otherwise everything worked fine; i kept getting power surge errors. WD offered to replace the drive, but that doesnt help me recover the data already on it now does it? anyway, pulled it out just fine (after a few fruitless and aggravating attempts on my own). again, thanks

To those who can get Windows to see the drive but get errors copying data to/from it, remove it from the case and install it in a computer on the secondary SATA channel in place of an optical drive. Windows will report problems upon booting and run chdsk on it for you.

Anyway, when I hooked it up internally, it still had the same problems but using GetDataBack I was able to find all of my files that still were on the drive (phew!) and copy them to another external harddrive (Lacie Porsche). It took an awful lot of time but it was really worth it, it seems like all my files are back!

I took the drive out not because there was anything wrong with it, but because my system was experiencing problems when the MyBook was attached at the same time as another USB storage device (SD card reader). Now I have a nice fast 500gb drive and a spare USB enclosure should I ever need one ?

Just a tips for you regarding connecting discs to USB. I took my disc out of the My Book case and bought this nice SATA/IDE cable that give you the possibility to connect your hard drive directly to a USB port.

Thanks for the guide! My 500gb essential edition is a big pain in the ass, but I finally got the case off. It had stopped being recognized in windows, but powering up fine and not making any weird noises, so I jiggled the connector inside and VOILA, workin fine again! I might just get a new enclosure now.

Second, inner case design have changed as well but easy to figure out once you get there. Try to unscrew the adapter on the top of hard drive first and then unscrew the rest to release the hard drive.

I just finished playing with a 1TB My Book and once I discovered the trick as posted here it was simple. I am dealing with the latest shipment from HD and here is what I know. Like posted before take a (in my case) a small flat blade screw driver to open. I put panters tape over the blade to avoid scratching the case. and do the foloowing:

1) Stand case upright with spine nearest to you. Place the screw driver just left of the center between the two pieces and press down. You may need to move towards the outside left. At some point you may hear a release sound (small noice im my case) and you will see that the cases have seperated a bit.

2) Turn the case over and repeat step 1 for the bottom release.

5) Take a careful look at the raised portion which contains the Sata to USB converter card this is held on by 2 screws. Remove thes two screws and this entire assembly sides out by moving towards the rear of the disk drive (where drive power connections are). THis uncovers the last 6th screw.

Another think I noticed about the HD was in one case poor performance, or the reason it was being replaced. THe performance of one of the drives was 30x slower that a identical drive. Doing a copy operation from same source to 2 identical targets. I did something that fixed the issue and it does not make any sense, but it may help others. What I did was delete the partition that came with the drive and created a new partition formeted it as a NTFS partition using the defaults. I then repeated the test and the performance problem was solved. I recreated the test a number of times with the same results. Once may ask how was I measuring and comparing, the method was not scientific I was just watching the time remaining indicator. The test to the good initial drive never showed more than 60 seconds and actually ran between 45 and 50 seconds. The the flaky drive it showed 9 minutes for the same folder and actually took about 12 minutes every time. After the new partiontion it took between 45 and 50 seconds.

I do not know why but it seemed to fix it.

I have a My Book Essential 250gb (bought in the UK in 2006) that one day, shortly after end of the warranty, failed to power up.

Tried replacing the power supply but this had no effect and then I found this site. Not sure I would ever have discovered the screw on the outer case, cunningly concealed behind a thin layer of plastic/paint that chipped off, exactly as described.

Got the drive out (again, compliments on the instructions) and discovered it was a WD Caviar SE 250 GB EIDE (WD2500JB) that luckily my desktop already had a spare cable for, and is now running as internal. All the data was fine.

I do intend to continue to use the drive after I format, though. And hopefully it will last me for some time afterwards. I want to be able to rely on it to keep things stored for a long period of time, and use it as a backup device for anything I download.

Scott, what you are attempting is an absolute last resort option, with chances of success very low, what you may end up with is two bad drives instead of one. I work in the storage division of a major computer manufacturer in RD and I would not try this outside of a lab. There are some very good commercially available data recovery programs out there for about $100. We have used these to successfully recovery lost data. I am not in my office where I have such hardware put if you Google NTFS partition recovery, you may find the company, they are in Minnesota (Edina) Here is the link to the software I have used:

Please note I do not work for this company or endorse its products, but I will say they have saved my a** on more than one occasion. Of course you mileage will vary. Good Luck

And for those commenting that the 500GB drives from WD are bad, please note they have over 1,000,000 of these drive in the field. And yes some number of them are going to be bad it just seems that most of us have found their way to this thread. I actually like taking the SATA II drive out of the enclosure and directly connecting. I only got two of these drives in the book form because of price, I then took them out of the enclosures.

Also, please note the 500GB may not be SATA II it may be SATA I, this makes a big difference since these drives did not support Tag Command Queuing or Ladder Sorting. What this means is grater and more random head movement.

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