Possible to replace disk in older WD external enclosure

[danter]

I have a Western Digital 750Gb external Drive WD7500H1CS-00
This would be approx 4 years old from memory (out of warranty).

Hard Disk Sentinel on my machine reports the health of the disk as 'Critical' at 10%.
There are 135 bad sectors on the disk surface. The contents of these sectors were moved to the spare area.
The drive found 55 bad sectors during its self test.
Based on the number of remapping operations, the bad sectors may form continuous areas.
At this point, warrenty replacement of the disk is not possible, only if the health drops further.
It is recommended to examine the log of the disk regularly. All new problems found will be logged there.

The data is not critical, and before it gets worse I was considering replacing the 750Gb disk with a 2 or 3Tb drive. Is this possible - and if so a simple straight swap into the enclosure? (does the new drive need to be a WD?) Better off just buying a new drive?

Thanks

(Windows 7 machine)

 

[Digital Life]

I did a quick search on the net and found a similar western digital to your's ( I think anyway although this one is 500 gig ) and it looks like you maybe in luck, this one looks like it takes a normal drive that you can just plug in if you are willing to take the unit apart.
Here is the link I found
Western Digital MyBook Open Case Recover Data | Scott Cramer wrote this.

 

[Berton]

It may be important to know if the drive in the WD box is SATA or PATA. The mention of 4 years could mean it's one or the other and the PATA may be hard to find for the larger sizes.

Looking on Google Search showed B&H Photo offering a WDC 2TB Elements external drive for $79.95, not a whole lot more than for a bare drive and the whole thing would have a warranty.
WD 2TB Elements External Desktop Hard Disk WDBWLG0020HBK-NESN