USB enclosure compatible with WD White label drive?

T

TheKitsuneWithATie

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Hello everyone,

I recently acquired a few used 500Gb Western Digital white label 2.5'' drives (model WD5000LUCT), and I'd like to convert them into external hard drives.

I hot plugged them in my Asus P8Z77-V PRO/Thunderbolt without any hassle. I ran SMART tests and they all passed. I then formatted them into NTFS and tried to install them in a few enclosures I have laying around.

I have a Sabrent UC-EM30 and a YouN 204809.03, but neither of them works. I think it's a firmware or controller issue.

I'd like to find an enclosure that would work with these hard drives, I already did a few researches but I didn't find anything.

Does anyone knows an enclosure that would work with these hard drives?

Thank you and have a nice day.
 
Some enclosures, WD specifically, need you to install and format the drives a certain way. Most are running a variant of Linux as a backend. You might find more information on their websites.
 
auntjemima said:
Some enclosures, WD specifically, need you to install and format the drives a certain way. Most are running a variant of Linux as a backend. You might find more information on their websites.
Click to expand...

Hi,

The enclosures are not from Western Digital, the hard drives are (WD5000LUCT) and I'm trying to install them in third party enclosures. Moreover, I already checked WD's instruction on their support website, but they are of not use in my case.

Thank you for your quick reply.
 
No, I was using WD as an example. The enclosure controller requires that the drives be formatted properly or with the proprietary software.
 
auntjemima said:
No, I was using WD as an example. The enclosure controller requires that the drives be formatted properly or with the proprietary software.
Click to expand...

Sorry I misunderstood your first answer. Well, I checked Sabrent's website and I couldn't find anything that could help, or any formatting instructions. And I just couldn't find YouN's website.

Moreover, I tried over hard drives in these enclosures and they work fine. I used mkfs under Linux to format them into NTFS.

Thank you for your answer.
 
its probably those old cheap enclosures as that drive should work in any. get a sata3/usb3 enclosure and it should be good. also check disk manager to make sure they are just trying to grab an already assigned drive letter.
 
pendragon1 said:
its probably those old cheap enclosures as that drive should work in any. get a sata3/usb3 enclosure and it should be good. also check disk manager to make sure they are just trying to grab an already assigned drive letter.
Click to expand...

Hi,

As I previously said, these enclosures work perfectly with other drives, so its not an issue of Windows trying to assign the drive an already taken letter. Moreover, I work under Linux (sorry, I should have specified it in the original post), which doesn't mount drives that way.

From what I've seen, most of the hard drive enclosures all pretty much use variation of the same controller under a certain price range, and I can't afford to pay 50€ for an enclosure.
 
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ok are the drives older? one is a sata 1 and the other is sata 2, so maybe they are picky with the newer sata3 drive. with normal generic enclosures there are no drivers or special formatting so they should just work. unless they dont support newer drives. you can get a decent enclosure for ~$20.
 
pendragon1 said:
ok are the drives older? one is a sata 1 and the other is sata 2, so maybe they are picky with the newer sata3 drive. with normal generic enclosures there are no drivers or special formatting so they should just work. unless they dont support newer drives. you can get a decent enclosure for ~$20.
Click to expand...

I used a Toshiba 500Gb 5400RPM drive to test them, I don't remember the exact model but it must be older.

Do you have any recommendation for an enclosure (brand/model/controller)? I need to be able to get it in Europe and i'd like to pay 20€ maximum (under 15€ would be perfect). Even if you don't know any enclosures for that cheap, I'd like to have your recommendations as it could narrow my research.

Thank you for your quick reply.
 
nope not really other than dont get cheap ones. go to amazon and enter sata3 and the $ range you want and get the one with the best reviews. again, spend ~20.
 
This is a wild guess, but some WD drives power up in standby mode, and this could cause a problem if the USB adapter doesn't wake up the drive.

You can use a program called HDAT2 to query and set the option.
 
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