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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?

Faceman2K23 ,
@Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

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.

jose1324 ,

Well.. out with it then!

ShepherdPie ,

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.

Bezzelbob ,
@Bezzelbob@lemmy.world avatar

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

BehindTheBarrier ,

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.

ShepherdPie ,

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.

ikidd ,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Moonrise2473 ,

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)

Ptsf , (edited )

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.

laughterlaughter , (edited )

oysters?

Edit: OP originally wrote "Osters." No need to downvote.

Ptsf ,

Indubitably.

laughterlaughter ,

Ozone!

zorflieg ,

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

jjlinux ,

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

Natal ,

Do you have places where you can buy those old business drives? Are there websites for this market?

ShepherdPie ,

https://serverpartdeals.com/

Petter1 ,

And maybe some juicy data to recover 😏 honestly, which enterprise sells its old drives? That is calling for a data leak, isn’t it?

surewhynotlem ,

The ones that aren't forced to care by regulators. So basically anyone that isn't finance or defense.

Petter1 ,

😳

TheHolm ,
@TheHolm@aussie.zone avatar

Many sells, some just wipe them, some just contains encrypted data. If you happy with just used drive eBay is full of surprises.

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 ,

NOOO who would ever do that. It

Sunny OP ,
@Sunny@slrpnk.net avatar

a lot of people it seems :>

Bizarroland ,

It's called shucking and it happens a lot especially in the home server home lab community.

Sunny OP ,
@Sunny@slrpnk.net avatar

learn something new every day :)

paraphrand ,

It’s a bummer that hard drives are priced this way. It’s been common for a few decades now.

lambda ,
@lambda@programming.dev avatar

The best ones for this are the ones from Best Buy. Easystore.

xavier666 ,
@xavier666@lemm.ee avatar

Don't you think it's wild that a hard drive, which is just chilling inside its case, suddenly has its innards spilled out using a screwdriver, and dumped into a 24/7 NAS with other hard disks.

A bit inhumane if you ask me.

laughterlaughter ,

It's totally inhumane but also no living thing was harmed, so - all good.

Petter1 ,

Just that those ext disk aren’t built for 24/7 usage. They will die faster and generate bigger costs over time 😉

ShepherdPie ,

My oldest ones have been running 24/7 since 2018 and tons of people have been doing the same. Where's your data to suggest that these drives fail faster than any other?

Bizarroland ,

If you look around and are informed then you can easily purchase drives that are designed for Nas use. I shucked three eight terabyte Western digital external hard drives and they were all WD reds, but because of the deal they were running they were $60 a piece cheaper inside of the shell than they were outside of the shell.

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 ,
@lnxtx@feddit.nl avatar

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

norbert ,

I've shucked probably 100s of those WD essentials and they just had a little SATA -> USB adapter on it. It's been a few years but it doesn't seem like they'd make a whole new PCB just to include USB.

Dhs92 ,

Within the past 2-3 years drive manufacturers have been swapping to USB PCBs directly attached to the drive controller, instead of using a SATA -> USB interface.

Cyber ,

Ok, so does that also mean we can check the SMART parameters now?

Previously, the USB interface effectively blocked access to them.

Faceman2K23 ,
@Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

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.

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.

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