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?

  • MstrDialUp@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Yup. And if you want to look up more info on how to do it correctly, look up hard drive shucking.

  • lnxtx@feddit.nl
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    6 months ago

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

    • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.uk
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      6 months ago

      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@kbin.social
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        6 months ago

        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.

  • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
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    6 months ago

    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

  • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Yes. Be aware there will be some pin blocking you need to do to make it work right because vendors know this trick.

    • stevestevesteve@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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

  • Mountain_Mike_420@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    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.