A WD Easystore or Elements USB external hard drive can be shucked and used as an internal hard drive. If your 10TB version of the USB drive contains the model WD100EMAZ, you can use the following instructions to convert it into a 4K native (4Kn) drive.

First, download the WD Hugo program, which can be found through an internet search or by requesting it from WD support.

Use the following command on your Ubuntu system to install the deb file for Hugo version 7.3.2:

sudo dpkg -i hugo-7.3.2.x86_64.deb

Run the following command to find the serial number of the hard drive:

hugo show

Then, format the hard drive with 4k block size:

# WARNING - BACKUP YOUR FILES BEFORE RUNNING THE BELOW COMMAND.
# THIS COMMAND WILL FORMAT YOUR HARD DRIVE AND DELETE ALL YOUR DATA.

hugo format -s DRIVE_SERIAL -b 4096 --fastformat

Replace DRIVE_SERIAL with your hard drive’s serial number. 4096 is used for the -b parameter to specify the 4k block size.

After hugo is done formatting the hard drive, confirm that your hard drive is now 4Kn:

root@server:/# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdc: 9.1 TiB, 10000831348736 bytes, 2441609216 sectors
Disk model: WDC WD100EMAZ-00
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 31428727-LAY1-TQ52-JN38-47DQ8IF92853