400GB External USB Hard Drive - Western Digital Elements $49.95 AR Staples

[rhegedus]

$:GB ratio - do the math

[danel2]

So my buddy and I both purchased one of these external drives on black friday last year. both stopped working almost at the same time 13 months later. As it is no longer under warranty am trying to take mine apart so i can hook it up to my desktop to try and recover the data. The drive looks fine so i think its only the power converter that is broken.

my question is, has anyone attempted to take one of these apart?
I can't get the cables off of the rear of the drive, (to separate the power usb coupler from the actual drive.) It looks like there may be tabs i have to push in, but they are really small, is there a tool for this?
any help would be appreciated.

THanks guys,

[rhegedus]

I took apart a WD My Booka few months back after I fried it putting the wrong power cable in.

Try Google - lots of guides.

[edDV]

The WD drive pictured above has 6 philips screws. One has a seal.
The older one comes apart at the side.

[handyguy]

Note this is a year old topic.

[slacker]

1 terabyte Western Digital now at Costco for $139.00.

[aedipuss]

if you missed the staples deal and are still looking, newegg's deal of the day is an external 400gb for $55 w/free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/special/shellshocker.aspx?cm_sp=HomepageTopRt-_-ShellShockr133-_...r_brandBnr.jpg

[DarrellS]

And I just finished buying a WD MyBook 500GB for $129.
Thanks for the tip, might add another one.

I got a 1TB WD MyBook at Fry's a couple of weeks ago for $144.99. Best Buy has the same drive for $259.99 right now.

[SingSing]

I am staying with internal SATA drives. I am not used to the 20MB/s speed, and the messy wiring.

500GB internal drive is about $60.00. See:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0235781

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145215

[aedipuss]

well some of us already have all internal sata and ide ports filled with drives and need to move files off of them. the plug in usb/firewire drives ares fine for long term storage of not presently needed files and backups. you just plug them in when needed and unplug/store them when not.

i use a removable ide/sata adapter that takes any normal internal drive and makes it usb/removable. when it's full i put it back in it's anti-static bag, label it and store it.

[SingSing]

The most common means of backup is not external hard drives. It is burning to DVD.