Replace Hard Drive in WD My Book?

[titanmiller]

Hello,

I have a 500GB Western Digital My Book Essential that went bad. Do I need to buy an entirely new External Drive or can I put a new HD (of any brand) into the enclosure?

Thanks

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

If you're past the one year warranty give it a try.

 

[bruceb]

If you can open it without breaking the case, then yes, any drive should be able to be used.
Probably an IDE interface model.

 

[RebateMonger]

I've seen a couple of these where the hard drive itself was good, but the MyBook electronics had failed.

 

[titanmiller]

Thanks for the help. I decided to buy an entirely new external drive since it was the exact same price as the bare drive. The drive had some bad sectors that I assume were caused by a head crash when the drive accidentally got tipped on it's side a while back.

 

[mpilchfamily]

You didn't try to run skndsk? The sectors may have gotten corrupted during a backup. skndsk should be able to repair them.

So far i love my MY Book but the included software doesn't do jack for me. Just sits there saying pending all the time and never backs things up. I've done everything and even customer support cant figure it out.