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?
Yup. And if you want to look up more info on how to do it correctly, look up hard drive shucking.
Yeah! The practice is called drive shucking (kinda like Oysters) and you just need to be considerate of the limitations. The drives often end up cheaper, but lose warranty support once they’re shucked. They’ll also occasionally be slower than a normal drive or have an odd connector, but that is rare since it’s usually cheaper to go with something ‘off the shelf’. If you Google it though you should usually be able to find the handful of drive SKUs they’ll use in whatever external you’re planning to shuck.
Shucked drives are usually the drives that are rejected for internal use because of quality issues. They might work fine, they might not. Be careful with them and remember, RAID is not a backup.
maybe if you buy them from aliexpress, but WD/Seagate USB drives have better warranty than internal drives and at the same time they need to withstand more abuse from users (of course that warranty is void the moment you shuck them)
for some people is normal to keep an hdd in the backpack and carry it around all the time (for me is unconceivable)
Yes. Be aware there will be some pin blocking you need to do to make it work right because vendors know this trick.
I have done this with dozens of drives and have never had to do any pin blocking. You only need to do that if you’re using an absolutely ancient sata power cable that doesn’t know about the spinup pin change
I had to do it with brand new psu and cables. Seasonic . So no
Same here. A brand new modular Seasonic Platinum PSU (back in 2018 when I built the PC) also needed the 3v3 pin covered. I just use Kapton tape over the pin to avoid any destructive methods or having to use sketchy molex connectors.
Used to be my main source of disks, but these days there are better ways and it is easier to know exactly what you are getting.
Well… out with it then!
Not the person you replied to, but my first 9 HDDs were all shucked from external WD enclosures (MyBook, Elements, EasyStore), but the last one I bought used from serverpartdeals.com. I think it was about $120 for a 14TB WD server drive. Thus far all is well with it after about a year.
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.
Do you have places where you can buy those old business drives? Are there websites for this market?
And maybe some juicy data to recover 😏 honestly, which enterprise sells its old drives? That is calling for a data leak, isn’t it?
The ones that aren’t forced to care by regulators. So basically anyone that isn’t finance or defense.
😳
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.
I like the trash to hook up any hard drive via USB.
But you don’t need 8 of them, do you?
You never know.
Stop staring at my cable box. I don’t have a problem!
Yeah one of these is literally my primary USB 3.0 to SATA adapter
oysters?
Edit: OP originally wrote “Osters.” No need to downvote.
Indubitably.
Ozone!
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 PSU Power Supply Unit 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
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 17 acronyms.
[Thread #769 for this sub, first seen 28th May 2024, 15:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Be aware. Some external USB drives, like WD Elements, have built-in USB controllers. So they don’t have a SATA connector.
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?
the 2.5" size of disks are now mostly direct USB controller disks rather than sata adapters internally.
3.5" disks are still SATA as far as i’ve seen but the actual sku’s of the disks are often the lower grades. like you will get a disk that looks like another good disk but with only 64mb of dram instead of 256 on the one you would buy as a bare internal drive for example so they can end up a bit slower. and warranties are usually void.
IMO, if you want the beast deals right now on a 12+ TB HDD, you should use serverpartdeals.com instead. I’ve got 2 manufacturer recertified 14 TB enterprise-grade drives from them and it was way cheaper than buying any 14 TB external drive.
Yes and i got “scammed” - western digital in order to save $3 included the USB port directly on the drive motherboard instead of the usual sata+usb like anyone else was doing
Same happened to me on a WD black
Which external drive did you buy? This must be a fairly recent change.
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.
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?
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.
Personally I think it’s a bad idea
There’s lots of things that can go wrong and most of the time those drives are made in super controlled environments because they can be extremely sensitive. It’s just not worth the headache
A lot of external drives are just internal devices with another controller and casing around. I had a 4TB I used with my laptop, and tore apart the casing and just plugged it into my desktop when I built one. Unless you start hammering the external case around, the drive will be fine.
It’s completely fine and was one of the most common ways to add a cheap new drive back in places like /r/datahoarder. The WD enclosures are super easy to take apart with guitar picks and old credit cards. The USB controller just slots into the SATA port and is held in place with a single Philips screw. I’ve been running these in my server since as far back as 2018 (usually adding 1-2 every year or two) without a single issue.
