(4) Remove four screws securing the drive unit to the inner case. When you’re doing it, you’ll see what I’m talking about. I had to use my fingernails and pry the edges of the solid black case away from the drive unit and just keep carefully working at it until I could get it to start coming apart. In truth, easier said than done so don’t cuss me out when you try it. Be careful not to push in too far and break the “catches” off. On my drive, I used a flat-head screwdriver to push one side in and a little to the side to lodge it just a little under the plastic case so it would stop popping back up again. It may be tricky getting both sides pressed in at the same time to slide off the case. See the next picture for a clear view of the “catches” with the case off. (2) On both the top and bottom of the drive there are plastic “catches” that must be pressed in to allow you to slide the outer case off the drive. Remove this sticker (mine was more like black paint that chipped off) and remove this screw. (1) There is a black sticker covering one screw securing the case. Click any of the images for a larger image. Here’s what I was looking for on the ‘net and did not find. After a little more research and some playing I did manage to disassemble the MyBook, recover my data, and return it to Western Digital (as pristine as possible so hopefully I did not obviously void any warranties – which would be ridiculous since I just wanted *MY* data back from *THEIR* broken drive). After reading a bit on the ‘net, common opinion was the power or USB on the MyBook was likely the cause – that these elements were not as robust as the drive itself. Western Digital sent me a replacement drive but told me that my data was lost unless I wanted to talk to their data recovery department and that it would most likely be costly.

Horror! Of course I didn’t have everything backed up – time to start saving money for a second 500 gig drive I guess.

One day I hooked it up to my computer and it would not power up (for the purposes of this post, the background as to why it might not boot up is irrelevant -)). I have a 500 gig Western digital MyBook external drive.

Wd passport click of death fix