Question: I have a 2TB Western Digital MyBook Essential External Hard-disk. I wanted to use the Hard-disk as an internal hard-drive for my PC running Linux Mint. So, I dis-assembled it, and took out the SATA Hard-disk. Now, I assembled it into my PC using the SATA port.
The hard-disk’s partition are not recognized now. In GParted. it shows as follows:
I then took out the hard-drive and assembled it back into its external USB case. It is recognized just fine now.
I am stumped. What might be causing this? The hard-drive is recognized just fine in its external USB case but NOT when connected through internal SATA.
Answer: It seems like the SATA-USB card in the external case encrypts data. So, the hard-disk is hardware encrypted, and can not be decrypted using any software. I am saying this on the basis of the discussion here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1828742/book-3tb-external-internal.html
So, the hard-disk can only be decrypted by that SATA-USB “card”. If I do want to use it as an internal hard-drive, I will have to re-format it while it is connected to my internal SATA port.