Western Digital My Book External HDD enclosure review

You can buy your own drive and buy your own case, but not all enclosures are made the same.

The chipset on the bridge can directly affect the performance, but little known is the casing itself.

I tore apart my Western Digital My Book drive just to look and it's the most cumbersome enclosure to tear down. It's a pain to get the cover to open, then from there it's a lot of work to get the drive out, but I can see a lot of engineering went into making this enclosure that makes it stand out from generic stuff you'll find.

So, the first impression is that it's just a boring looking enclosure that looks like a book. On the top, you'll see copious amounts of ventilation slots. It's a chore to get this thing apart, but once you do, you'll see that a lot of thoughts went into protecting the drive agaist shock, heat, as well as theft.


The drive is mounted on a steel chassis on four corners with each mounting point suspended on a rubber suspension much like a car engine to protect the drive from shock and vibration. The tip of each screw makes electrical connection to the hard drive, but the screw doesn't directly touch the chassis, so they used a special spring loaded washer placed behind the screw and ground it to the chassis for shielding purpose. Very clever.

Also look at the gap designed between the chassis and the drive. This creates a path for airflow.



Chassis have holes for airflow. The arm on the side is for Kensington security cable.


On the back, there is a Kensington security port. Many generic enclosures have a washer backing attached with a double sided tape to provide some strength over bare plastic, but limited by the strength of plastic panel.

My Book's port is backed with the main steel chassis, making it next to impossible to rip out the port by brute force. You might take your laptop around, but your external drive will probably stay on your desk 24/7. This is particularly useful at work, or in dorm rooms where roommates might not keep the room secured consistently.




With the drive fully assembled, the rubber skids on the bottom makes a gap to allow air to flow through the drive by convection.


Don't assume the cooling isn't as good as aluminum. Many aluminum enclosures are enclosed. The drive sits suspended inside the case, which heats up the sorrounding air, then the sorrounding air air heats up the enclosure and finally outside air cools the enclosure. This is better than a plastic enclosure built the same way, but WD's vented design that allow convection current to directly cool the drive offers much superior cooling performance.

 

The one I took apart is the USB 2.0 Essential Edition 400GB.

Although the box includes feet for use in horizontal position, I think you'll reap the benefit of convection cooling better in upright position as the drive would be placed with their largest surface area in airflow. Remember those steam convection heater in old buildings? The fins are vertically arranged.

Same with passive heatsinks in audio equipment.



They're available in a few different designs and interface configuration.
USB2.0
Firewire + USB 2.0
Ethernet
Firewire + USB2.0 + eSATA

Unfortunately, you can't buy just the enclosure, but if you find an older one or you already have one, the enclosure should definitely be re-used.

You probably will not find an external enclosure for a reasonable price with comparable cooling and shock protection performance.

 

Nice post! My MyBook Essential MDL: WD5000CO32 recently died (cat pushed it off my desk onto wood floor so she could lay there instead) and I have a few questions you might be able to help me with.

Firstly, is there a good chance that the thing doesn't work because the enclosure itself broke, and the hdd inside is still fine (it clicks and io errors when I try to read it)? It's be great if I could still use the drive.

Secondly, if the problem is not with the enclosure but with the drive, and I were to therefore buy another hard drive, could I use this for the enclosure? If so, what sort of hdd should I buy (SATA, etc), and what would be the size limit?

Lastly, do you have any tip on how to open the thing safely? I can get most of the case loose but there's one screw that's mighty in the way...

Thanks a billion!

 

There are a bunch of opening instructions if you search Google. You really can't get it apart without scratching it up.

 

Thanks for your efforts. I'm currently looking for an external HDD and this really cinch it for me.