WD Mybook 8Tb shucking

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I_D

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Aug 3, 2017
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I started this new thread to document some of the findings with these shuckable mybook drives.
Did not want to continue polluting the Great Deals topic I have for them there


First look

Untill I'm done with the burn-in, there's not much to post here yet, so here's a picture of how they arrived:



One thing I noticed that these come with a UK power plug on the adaptor and a piece to switch it to a EU power plug. (those silly brits)

I am not going to go into details on how to open the enclosure.
Just watch this tutorial on youtube.
Instead of cards, I used a miniture screw driver set and a pocket knife, worked much better.
I managed to pry the enclosure open and only break 1 tab.

Closer look
This is what I found when I opened the enclosure:



On the bottom of the hard drive, you can find the pcb used to provide power and usb3 connection:



Enclosure chipset
Please note that the picture above shows the pcb on another drive I had lying around.
I had already taken the 8TB drive out, and plugged the pcb into another drive.
(I had an old 1TB drive lying around I wanted to put in the enclosure).
When I tried to connect it with the new drive, I could not initialize the drive in Windows.
After some research online it turns out the pcb has a chip to restrict which drives it will allow.
If you look closely at the above picture, you can see this chip is marked as U2.
The chip has 8 headers that connect to the PCB, if you cut header 7 and 8, the pcb will accept any drive you want.
I carefully cut these connections and sure enough it worked, but there seems to be 1 big downside:
the drive no longer spins down after you disconnect it in Windows.
I tried about 6 different drives including a WD Red, Green, Blue and some Samsungs and HGSTs, and they all just kept going.

Power Issues
Some people reported having to tape off one of the sata power pins to get these to work in their systems.
I tried these in a few different whitebox systems as well as a Supermicro SC846, and experienced no issues whatsoever.

Extra Info
Some handy links:
Finally got around to uploading my WD my book shucking guide. Hope it helps you guys in getting some cheap white label reds (256mb cache)! : DataHoarder
8TB WD MyBook shucking results : DataHoarder

Conclusion
All in all I am pretty happy with the 8TB drives, they are 5400rpm but perform really well!
Even while still in the USB3 enclosure, I got around 200MB/sec.
The drives I replaced them with in the enclosure later on, only did around 135MB/sec (they are far older).
I'll add some benchmark screenshots later on.

Important: as msg7086 mentioned earlier, you should really schuck these drives over your couch or bed or something soft, as the inner cage comes flying out as soon as you push it out.
I was glad I followed his advice and avoided landing my drive on the floor, it shot out when I pried open the clips.
 
Last edited:

msg7086

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May 2, 2017
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If you don't mind my plugging into this thread XD

Basic procedure is 5 plastic cards inserted at the top, and loose tabs at the bottom then push the drive cage out of the frame.

It's very easy for you to drop the drive cage (and of course the drive) onto the ground or hard desk surface when you push the drive cage out. Mine got a kiss with the carpet but luckily it survived.
 

weust

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Aug 15, 2014
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Is it known if the MyBooks come with the older or newer model 8TB (RED) drives?
As in, 128MB cache or 256MB?
 

I_D

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Aug 3, 2017
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Added some more info.
Let me know if you guys want more pictures or information on anything else
 

Joel

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Jan 30, 2015
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Is it known if the MyBooks come with the older or newer model 8TB (RED) drives?
As in, 128MB cache or 256MB?
Pretty sure nowadays they're all white label drives (though they are still RED drives) that WILL need the 3.3v mod. I don't know about the cache size though.
 

msg7086

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May 2, 2017
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Is it known if the MyBooks come with the older or newer model 8TB (RED) drives?
As in, 128MB cache or 256MB?
Unless that's very old stock. Reports are that people got newer models from at least 1.5 years ago, so I'm pretty sure you'll almost always get the newer model, i.e. 256MB cache model.
 

msg7086

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May 2, 2017
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Pretty sure nowadays they're all white label drives (though they are still RED drives) that WILL need the 3.3v mod. I don't know about the cache size though.
Also want to add that my Antec PSU that I bought 7 (seven) years ago has absolutely no problem with those 3.3v drives.
Instant plug and play.

So you may not always hit that issue if you happened to have a proper PSU.
 

sparx

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Jul 16, 2015
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Thanks for the guide. I had a few shucked since before and didnt realize the fix to get the pcb to work with all drives was so easy. Too bad it also needs the external power to work. Would be nice to feed over USB only with SSDs etc. Maybe there is a fix for that aswell :)
 

I_D

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Aug 3, 2017
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If anyone knows a trick to getting non-WD drives to spin down once you've installed them in the old enclosure, please let me know!
Also, feel free to reply if you have anything to add to this post.
I will try to keep it updated with all the interesting info I can find.
 

sparx

Active Member
Jul 16, 2015
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Well. Maybe asking Asmedia to hand out general firmware for the ASM1151W controller. I couldnt find any info online about the component. It might be an older component, or specific for branded external enclosures. Or firmware. Maybe its just a settings-eeprom. Maybe another external case has the same controller and its possible to use firmware from that one :)