Have you ever bough an external hardrive only to take the disk out of it?

Hiya, so am looking to buy more storage and while browsing am seeing some external harddisks, such as Western Digital My Book and Seagate Expansion Desktop for cheaper than the internal harddisks themselves. Have seen this one video from KTZ Systems where he bought up multiple of these external ones just to open them up and use the disks for his own server. Was therefore wondering if you peeps have ever done this and if there any downsides to it at all?

zorflieg ,

I think I'd buy 2nd hand quality server drivers before I'd shuck.

jjlinux , (edited )

Indeed. That's how I populated my NAS with 3 10TB drives and saved around 120 dollars total, and this was 4 years ago.

These are the ones I got: https://a.co/d/8x58jBY

The only extra thing was disabling the 3v pin, and that was it. Been running rock solid all this time.

Just make sure to research what disks are in the external housings you're planning on getting, as not all drives need to have pins removed/covered.

MonkderDritte , (edited )

I did once. Well, more along the lines of "what did i buy this thing for, can use the HDD as is". The HDD had additional contact points at the bottom. Don't remember if they worked as is and what i did with them.

TheHolm ,
@TheHolm@aussie.zone avatar

Why create yourself a headache and still get substandard and no-warranty drive. If you want cheaper drives go for reconditioned/refurbished/used drives. Same risks, better product. Old enterprise SAS drives are cheap and many still have plenty of heath in them.

qaz ,

Do keep in mind that you need a SAS controller for that, which can cost between $50-200

lazylion_ca ,

This is what I did when I had to refurb a laptop. Swap the drives, reinstall the OS, snd hand it all to the user. All your files are on this usb drive.

Thats when you find out who understands folder structure and who doesn't.

Phoonzang ,

I guess it shows how out of touch (old) I am that it's completely bewildering to me that there could be people who do not understand folders ... on a computer. Phones, tablets, yeah, I get that, those actively make it harder and harder to access the folder structure. But computers?

Auli , (edited )

NOOO who would ever do that.

Sunny OP ,
@Sunny@slrpnk.net avatar

a lot of people it seems :>

SeaJ ,

Not specifically, no. When I did change to building my own NAS, I cracked open my older 4TB backup drive to use as a spare.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

I thought you were talking about the platter

lnxtx , (edited )
@lnxtx@feddit.nl avatar

Be aware. Some external USB drives, like WD Elements, have built-in USB controllers. So they don't have a SATA connector.

Sunny OP ,
@Sunny@slrpnk.net avatar

Good to know! thanks

Cyber ,

This must've changed as I've shucked WD Elements / Book drives and they were normal drives...

So, you're saying the actual harddrive has a USB chipset onboard and only a USB interface?

When did this start happening?

icy_mal ,

I think this depends on whether it's a 3.5 or 2.5 inch drive inside. To my knowledge, all external drives with a 3.5 inch drive inside are shuckable and have a standard SATA interface. With the compact drives that have a 2.5 inch drive inside, many will have a native usb interface and no SATA connector.

It makes sense as 3.5" sata drives are used for many many applications so why make something new just for external drives? With 2.5, however there are very few devices that use spinning sata drives in this form factor. It makes a lot more sense to build the USB interface directly on the drive since their main and possibly only application is external drives.

I could be wrong, but this has been my experience.

Cobrachicken ,

Yup, with 2,5" Seagates. Reused the enclosure with smaller used enterprise ssds to make cheap USB sticks.

hperrin ,

I haven’t bought them specifically for that, but I have harvested drives from them. A lot of times, you’ll have to destroy the enclosure to get to the drive. If you’re ok with that, go for it.

Gormadt ,
@Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I've shucked a few drives in the past but when there was a big sale on hard drives awhile back I finished decking my NAS out with 8TB drives that weren't shucked as they came out to be cheaper than the ones in enclosures at the time.

The main downside is warranty really and some of the drives from enclosures need to have the power blocked on one of the pins to work (can't remember which sorry) due to the type of drive they are.

Decronym Bot , (edited )

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
NAS Network-Attached Storage
RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.

[Thread for this sub, first seen 28th May 2024, 15:55]
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bunny_funeral ,
@bunny_funeral@lemmy.world avatar

after doing it for a few drives and observing the failure rates of said drives i just buy drives with warranties now. i've got a few shucked drives still kicking around though.

Mountain_Mike_420 ,

Yes I’ve done it. What sucks is you make a lot of trash this way. Also double and triple check that the drives you buy will have standard sata connectors on them.

bjoern_tantau ,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

I like the trash to hook up any hard drive via USB.

JustARegularNerd ,

Yeah one of these is literally my primary USB 3.0 to SATA adapter

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