WD Elements as Internal HDD

lakers1222 on 03/09/2013 - 17:48

Hey OzBargainers,

I'm in the process of buying 3TB hard drives for my computer. I noticed the MSY sell 3TB externals HDD for $119 and 3TB internal HDD for $135.

Being a cheapskate, I bought the internal HDD and its works flawlessly with USB but when I cracked the case open, and connected it by SATA connection to my computer, it is not recognised anywhere. I can't even find it in Disk Manager.

I read somewhere that the WD USB-to-SATA encrypts information so that it can't be used without the USB controller. Not sure if that true.

Can anyone help me please ?

Computing Computer Peripheral External Hard Drive Western Digital

Comments

  • bitcoinorbust on 03/09/2013 - 18:00

    It should work fine but first thing is to check drive is being seen by your motherboard when it boots. Check the BIOS

    • lakers1222 on 03/09/2013 - 18:12

      I'm going to check the BIOS now. Should I be using IDE or AHCI ?
      When I popped the drive into a different computer it was recognised straight away and is working fine but I really wanted to use this drive in my HP N40L computer.

      • hellbound on 04/09/2013 - 10:06

        You should be using AHCI or RAID, but if it's currently set to IDE you wont be able to change it unless you do some registry editing beforehand.
        Also, iirc you needed to do a bios update to get the N40L to recognise HDDs bigger then 2TB, check if there's a newer bios version.

  • matchbox on 03/09/2013 - 18:52

    sorry didn't read it properly

  • [Deactivated] on 03/09/2013 - 21:39

    It should work fine. SATA is SATA and USB is USB. Unless of course you have a specific drive with specific features that are advertised in order to target a niche market. 3TB Western Digital drives are about as mainstream as you can get however.

  • p1 ama on 03/09/2013 - 22:53
    +1

    Nopes, not true, I have 4 x 2TB drives which are WD Elements cracked open, all work fine, try using another cable and checking connections and try using another SATA port.

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