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.
oysters?
Edit: OP originally wrote “Osters.” No need to downvote.
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?
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.
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.
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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
This has been the case since SATA revision 3.3, released Feb 2016. So while I may have exaggerated with “ancient”, a brand new PSU certainly shouldn’t still be feeding 3.3v to that pin.
It’s called shucking and it happens a lot especially in the home server home lab community.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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 keep in mind that you need a SAS controller for that, which can cost between $50-200
And maybe some juicy data to recover 😏 honestly, which enterprise sells its old drives? That is calling for a data leak, isn’t it?
Many sells, some just wipe them, some just contains encrypted data. If you happy with just used drive eBay is full of surprises.
