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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Have you ever bough an external hardrive only to take the disk out of it? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

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

Previously, the USB interface effectively blocked access to them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

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.