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I might have made a $150 mistake. I saw a WD MyBook 8TB External Drive for $150, and thought that it was quite a bargain and wanted to use it as an internal drive on my 2010 Mac Pro tower.

Before cracking it open, I partitioned/formatted to a Mac OS format. Now, when put inside a Mac, it’s not seen at all. The usual “Can’t recognize drive” message doesn’t appear, nor can I access it via disk utility.

I wrote to Western Digital, and got a canned reply. My question was whether the WD80EZAZ drive was built in a way that it would not function without the PC board that converts from SATA to USB? I am looking for confirmation that this type of sabotage is possible, and if there is any work-around.

FWIW, I saw this other question “Converting an external hard drive to internal” but in that case, the drive functioned fine, and I’ve done this before with other drives, which is why this caught me by surprise.

Giacomo1968
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    It might be possible, but IMO the only company that would do that is Apple. Are you sure the drive is getting power? (You might be able to hear/fell it spinning up when the computer is switched on.) Have you tried putting the drive back on the SATA to USB adapter? – Andrew Morton Jun 30 '18 at 11:05
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    Are you sure your Mac can take hard drives this big? – Daniel B Jun 30 '18 at 11:13
  • Two ideas: 1) The SATA power connector can (should) provide 3.3, 5 and 12v power. But many modern drives no longer need the 12v. Does the Mac supply +12v (just in case that this particular drive does need it? 2) Some drives can be jumpered not to spin up until they receive a start command. Quite useful to prevent a large power surge at power on time of a PC with dozens of drives. And often seen in SCSI & SAS RAID cards. SO basically, what happens when you send this drive a 'start, spin up' command via mac equivalent of hdparms? – Hennes Jun 30 '18 at 11:50
  • The reality is most any of these 2TB and higher drives cannot be formatted in an external enclosure and then placed internally. Different controllers for a whole slew of reasons, but the “Copy externally, hook up internally trick” doesn’t work when it comes to any drive larger than 2TB. If you take that same drive and just hook it up internally and then format it, you should be fine. – Giacomo1968 Jul 03 '18 at 17:01
  • And in addition, if you are attempting to use this drive in a Mac Pro (Tower) you need to make sure the internal SATA connection will recognize the full 8TB. – Giacomo1968 Jul 03 '18 at 17:04
  • @JoeTaxpayer The problem with providing an answer to your question—coming from someone who has just seen it—is it’s utterly not clear what make/model fo Mac you were attempting to do this on. Just because something has SATA connectors doesn’t mean the SATA controller can logically deal with the drive… Or even electrically deal with it. – Giacomo1968 Jul 03 '18 at 17:12
  • “It made clear that the drive could at least be repurposed, and why, for me, the issue is resolved.” @JoeTaxpayer Congrats on being able to use the drive in another way, but that is not an answer to why that drive won’t work as described in a MacPro 2010. And your update was just a casual “solution” that only works for you. It’s like saying “How can I fix a dead PC?” and then updating it and saying, “By using it as a doorstop.” And even if you found a solution it must be posted as an answer. You can self-answer questions but not with the kind if details you provide. – Giacomo1968 Jul 03 '18 at 21:40

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