Convert an external WD hard drive to internal use

So you have an external hard drive lying around that you now want to use in your computer, or maybe you even bought an external drive as it was cheaper to buy than a regular desktop drive. Congrats on the decision; there are many reasons why this might make sense for your internal storage.
However, some manufacturers have a trick up their sleeves preventing you to from having the drive recognized by your computer. This is not a matter of formatting the drive or changing a setting in the operating system to have it show up, no, it is hardware-based and your BIOS won't even know what to do with the drive. And yet, there is an easy fix to non-permanently modify your hard drive and have it work on your computer.
In this video, I will be showing you how to convert and modify a Western Digital white label drive for usage in a desktop computer as internal storage.

[seikaye]

For anyone wondering, for the seagate barracuda st3000dm001, you don't need to do the tape. Just plug it in the sata and molex and format it to be able to use it as an internal HDD

[terryl]

Brilliant! So well explained and demonstrated - I just cracked open the case and applied the tape, put it in as an internal and it works great! Thanks so much!!!

[mikecawthorn]

Great stuff Bud
I was planning to expand my stroarage with a larger drive and repurpose the current external storage to replace a 500 gid internal use, as its atill good
Thereby discardind the smaller .

[aenoire]

Really tempted to do this for my xbox one. I'd much rather pay 90-100 for a 4tb than about 130 for an internal one, and I hate having the hard drive hanging off the console

[Bmonk]

This is the perfect solution i have been looking for long time now. Works perfect.

[aydeel]

Great video! I have a seagate portable expansion, so i have a question, does the 3.3v pins placement on seagate hdd is the same as WD hdd?

[Tomzclipz]

im going to do the same, i cant figure out how to open the hdd enclosure and remove it?

[jacksonwillbert]

I'm having input output errors with my Seagate 8TB external desktop drive. My file and folders are only recognizable for a few seconds when I connect to my PC or laptop, then the folders are listed as empty, and I get the I/O error. Yet in disk mgmt, the drive is listed as having "healthy" status. Is it possible that connecting directly to internal SATA using the tape method will allow me to access files so I can copy them? I'm not looking for a long term fix, just a temporary hack and will discard the drive when I'm done.

[RobSoRandom]

I was wondering can i do this with my WD black drive

[jackalseesyouhiding]

amazing! here i thought i wouldnt use my 8TB because of the other usb ports being taken up

[BM-wfjj]

It worked with a WD Black 12 TB external drive (which is basically a datacenter drive inside of an enclosure) and my computer automatically tried to save some corsair icue files to it but it started making this really concerning sound almost like a poker card hitting a fan or low frequency, low voltage arcing. No smoke or external physical damage though. Going to check out what happens if I just plug it in without the tape.

[swappetro]

Will it work for WD Element 1TB as well?

[balinttoth]

Hey there, this is exactly what I was looking for, you are a lifesaver<3

One question I have however, is whether it is now ready to be put into a RAID configuration? It is what I am planning to do and according to some sources the external ones aren't 100% the same as the internal ones.
The one detail that caught my eye was the size of cache. The external one is only 32mb compared to that of the internal one's 256. Am I going to create a horrible bottleneck by installing a former external drive into my RAID storage?
Thanks.

[yemarican]

thank you ... question though .. can I use an external hard drive (a mechanical one), take it out of its shell and install it inside of a laptop?? my laptop is a lenovo t460 with a 256 ssd hard drive .. is it possible?? I thought I may ask before I attempt that myself ;)

[pauljb]

Is this fix only for new or empty drives? Can this be used when you have existing data to transfer ?

[anacorn]

So, I tried this method with my WD HD and it didn't seem to work. Idk if it's because my HD is an older model or something else but I was just wondering if there could be another thing at play here or if I might just be doing something wrong.

[kokizzu]

thanks a lot XD

that's why my newer external WD not detected as internal,

this is awesome hack

[mrnelgin]

I just got 4 x 6tb WD Elements to replace 4x4TB disks and I nearly cried when I saw errors all over the place on bootup. After applying your patch, I can now see the drive in fdisk. I'm just worried that I'm trusting all my data to a small sliver of electricians tape. This will be in a RAID 10 so at least I have some protection and it's all backed up anyway. Thanks for this tip.

[CriptoBoom]

Convert that hdd to internal improves the write speed? I have it external and only 40mb of write speed...

[brianlorsung]

On my WD drives, I also had to set Windows to never shut down the drives, or they would shut down and not "wake" up. The drives would start disconnecting after a few days.