Western Digital Elements drive, One TB, Pull-apart insides

Last night I pulled apart the Western Digital Elements portable 2.5" External hard drive.
This drive is quite light and easy to carry around. My new favorite in portability and relatively cheap.
I remember hauling a box full of floppies mid to late nineties, this elements drive is so much better!

Prying open the case was not too bad. Simple unplug the cable, gently expand one of the edges with a jewelers screwdriver flat head and then insert a larger flat head in the cavity and pry gently all around. Do not start at the cable end but on the side middle. Once the cover is poped on all sides, simple slide the cover up at the cable input and it should gently lift out with no damage.

I will discuss further after the images, but here they are(Click to enlarge):

Cover off. Drive still in bottom casing.

Drive out of bottom casing.

Cable end of the drive. You can see the Drive form factor for a 2.5 in is retained but is bonded to the disk controller that has a USB interface built into it.

Better view of the drive controller and USB interface circuit board at the bottom of the drive.

Put back together. The screwdriver is the smallest one I have and it is 13 cm in length.

The drive controller circuit board that is normally present on all Hard Disk Drives to control and communicate between the host and the drive mechanics also has a usb interface. It does not appear like you can simply purchase a 2.5" drive and put it in this casing. However at the low costs these things are, why would you want to! The drive is from their Western Digital Blue range.

The drive mounting screws have rubber around them that slides freely into the bottom half of the casing. This provides some cushion against shock and likely helps reduce vibrations from the drive filtering onto the surface the unit is in contact with. Other than that, the inside is fairly unremarkable.

This is an awesome drive and it is currently plugged into my NetGear R8000 Nighthawk wireless router so I can share files on any devices on my wireless network. I mostly put backup files on it however.

Enjoy, and remember, I pulled this apart so you don't have to!