Mod a WD passport Essential to Sata Internal

I posted this on HDD guru forum, but as I am a new member there, maybe it won't ever be posted. Hard forum mebmers, anyone have any experience?

I have a brand new Western Digital my passport Essential Drive(actually 3 of them), see picture below.




I plan on using them as internal drives though and got them for a great price. This is the first time I have ever bought a WD external drive and I was shocked to see no apparent sata connections on the PCB when I tore it apart. See this post to see what I am talking about if you are unfamiliar.

I have read many post on HDD guru forum already about people trying to get these drives to work on Sata, and there seems to be a good amount of misinformation mixed in there. I saw this guide from this post which had the most detailed information. Also can be seen on this website.

As for me, experience wise, I have a nice solder station, have made a custom working msata to sata adapter(etched my own board). I have lots of nice motherboard pin adapters that would fit perfectly over the 2x6 pin connecter coming off of this drive, so I would prefer to minimize soldering points directly on PCB(looks like I can get grounds from there). Does anyone know the exact Data port assignments, I am assuming(as this makes the most logical sense to me) that E71=A+ E72=A- E73=B- E74/75=B+ ???
My PCB is slightly different than the one from the guide. See picture below. Also, do I really need to remove all 4 capacitors as shown in the guide? Do have a heat gun for that as well.


I don't mind making a bunch of custom connects if it means I can use this as a speedier Sata drive, I am quite certain the USB is lagging the drive and capping my read/write to 25/20 MB/s. I bought these drives cause they were a steal at $25, would still like to use them rather than hock them on ebay. As for the USB power input, I got plently of Molex connects I could wire to it.

Now there has been a lot said about automatic/transparent encryption, Is this an issue I need to worry about, If I plug the right signals to the right wires, can I use the drive as I intend. I would like to use these as boot drives. These are going in a tower, FYI, so not concerned about added dimension after soldering.

Please educate me if I am wrong. This seems like a fun mod to me, any objections/pointers/ suggestions are appreciated.

IMHO I would just sell them and grab real internal 2.5" 250gb SATA drives for $40 instead.

This thread, found via the links you posted seems to show how to wire a SATA connector but would you really trust your data to this?

http://www.datarecoverytools.co.uk/...-western-digital-drives-with-hd-doctor-suite/

Those external drives usually have worse warranty also.

s0rce said:

IMHO I would just sell them and grab real internal 2.5" 250gb SATA drives for $40 instead.

This thread, found via the links you posted seems to show how to wire a SATA connector but would you really trust your data to this?

http://www.datarecoverytools.co.uk/...-western-digital-drives-with-hd-doctor-suite/

Those external drives usually have worse warranty also.

Click to expand...

Ha warranty, yeah I read that web page, if you look it isn't very specific about what is transmit and what is receive, I showed that in my picture above as well. I am pretty certain how to hook it up but I worry about some sort of encryption.

Warranty? Pretty sure I blow that as soon as I touch the drive with my soldering iron. Warranty is not even a concern. and yes, I would totally trust my data to this drive, even with sata connect wired to a PCB, electrically, its the same as any other drive..