Today, we're going to find out how to determine the model number of the 3.5"
disk that resides inside your external hard drive without
physically opening the case. This can be useful to know if you plan to shuck it,
due to the fact that specific hard disk model numbers have different
characteristics and behaviors. For instance, the Western Digital Easystores,
Elements, and MyBook series may contain red label or white label disks, and among
the white labels, some may exhibit 3.3 volt pin issues while others don't. I
won't go through the exact differences in behavior between specific disk models
in this video, but I'll leave a link in the description where you can find these
details. On the Seagate side, you can find out the internal model numbers of the
Backup, Backup Plus and Expansion series, and compare them to the Desktop or
Barracuda type disks. So the challenge is to find the model number inside the
enclosure without having to open it up. Unfortunately, the built-in Windows tools
such as System Information, Disk Management, and the Device Manager don't
report the internal disk model. For example, when I plug in a Western Digital
Easystore, Windows simply reports it as an Easystore 25FB USB Device. To find
out what's inside, we'll use a free program called Crystal
Disk Info in Windows 10. There are other utilities that you can use, not only for
Windows, but for Linux and Mac OS X as well. I'll be focusing on Windows since
that's what I use. What you'll want to do is google crystaldiskinfo...
and click on the first link that's returned. After the crystalmark.info page loads, click on
the download link. You can get the zip version, as well as the source code, but
for the purposes of this tutorial, I'll just grab the executable version with
the installer. This takes you to the Download page where it will download the file automatically.
Clicking on the downloaded file, the Installer will start,
where I'll accept the license agreement, and then hit Next, Next, and Next to
accept the defaults. and finally Install.
By clicking Finish, the program will launch, where you'll see that I already
have a C drive in my computer. When you plug in your external drive,
it will normally become the next letter drive, which is D in my case. If you plug
it in - like I've just done here - while Crystal Disk Info is already running, it
won't automatically show up on the user interface. You'll need to shutdown and
restart the program, after which you'll see the newly plugged in drive, as you can see here.
So let's do that for the Western Digital Easystore 8 TB
hard drive. I'll plug the powered drive into a USB port, after which Crystal Disk Info
retrieves a wealth of information, including the product number, capacity,
the firmware, the serial number, rotation rate, the SMART information, and most
importantly, the model number - which is WD80EFAX. With this number, you can look
up the compendium linked in the description to get more information on
this model. In a previously published video, which I've linked as an info card
in the top right corner, I go through the motions of removing the disk from the Easystore
enclosure, where we discover that it is indeed a model WD80EFAX, which
is a red label disk. I've also linked to my video on the 3.3v pin fix, if you
happen to get a white label disk. Now let's try an 8TB Seagate
Expansion. Crystal Disk Info reports the model number as ST8000DM004. Again,
I've linked to my video where I take it out of its case to reveal a Barracuda
Compute disk, with a green label. We can see that the model number according to
the label is indeed the same. Finally, let's see what's inside a 5TB
Seagate Backup Plus Hub. The program tells me it's an ST5000DM000. After
shucking the drive in this previously published video that I've linked above,
we discover a Seagate Desktop disk with a white label - and Crystal Disk Info
proves itself to be accurate.
I hope you enjoyed - Thanks for watching!