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?

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

I thought you were talking about the platter

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.

Auli , (edited )

NOOO who would ever do that.

Sunny OP ,
@Sunny@slrpnk.net avatar

a lot of people it seems :>

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?

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

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.

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.

zorflieg ,

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

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