Shucking External Hard Drive Enclosures for Cheap Storage
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- Опубліковано 20 сер 2024
- Drive shucking to get cheap storage!!!
Quick note: Shucked drives may contain shorter warranties than bare drives. Example, this one only has 2 years.
Link to Drive I Shucked: amzn.to/3MC1PRZ
Link to screwdriver set (blue version): amzn.to/49vRSzj
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**Link to the screwdriver set I used (or at least the blue version of it)**
amzn.to/2DnjElc
Thanks for the video, If you want another hard drive.
www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-8tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/5792401.p?skuId=5792401
Same here...lol... Thanks for the link!!
was wondering if you can please help me... I dropped my WD 4TB and now I have trouble opening the files, all the files are there
but the videos/movies won't play, is there no hope for the drive? is it cheaper if I just buy another one? plz help
Do you know if there is a link to the full set of tools & the the stand? Looks like a great set
David Norman YES! I want it too!
Better yet, hook the drive up through USB and use Crystal Disk Info software to get model number before going through hassle of trying to shuck drive. Return as necessary.
Nice Program.
Sorry what would be the purpose of this
some people only want the red drives
Where those the program tell you the information you need?
A few years behind the release of the video…. I never knew the kids had a hip, slick, and cool word to describe my frugality.
In 2022 I found 4TB WD My Passport disks for $39 each at Target. I suspect it was a mislabel situation but when checking out they scanned as $59 I was pretty excited. I “shucked” the cases and added them to my Unraid array. I bought the only 4 on the shelf.
Also remember to keep the sata to USB adapter circuit. I've used one to hook up bare drives and even dvd drives to laptops as a sort of SAta to USB adapter
"addicted to terabytes" I'm going to use that as my own.
David Downs make a good slogan for a shirt
I have 4 of these 8tb drives and I only got a single Red drive from them. My usual process is that I pre-clear the drive first to make sure the drive is ok. I then carefully remove from the enclosure and I store the enclosure in the original box which has the serial on it and so if I do have an issue I can pop the drive back into the enclosure and return it under warranty. I have mainly done this with 4td drives over the last few years as they were the sweet spot. As 8tb drive prices drop I moved to those :) .
it is the label color for WD NAS spec drives, so drives made for servers.
I do this all the time. I’ve been doing this for years.
The WD MyBook I bought a year or so ago melted at the external power source plugin, so I ended up shucking it; it contained a WD Blue :(
impressive screwdriver set
agreed what is the make and brand of your tools
Agreed also interested in screwdriver set
Commenting just so I can see later.
I have the same set. Got them for $20 at tractor supply of all places.
amzn.to/2DnjElc
This drive was a Black Friday special. As you mentioned in your edit it is still a "Red" drive but is based off of the HGST He10 drive from what I could find. The only issue with them is that if your connectors power the 3.3V pin it won't turn on as HGST uses that to force the "reboot" of a drive. It is stupid but that's the way it is.
Can you elaborate please?
HAHAHAHAHA that drawing Jason ... :P
Editing Jason needs to appear in every vid cuz he's deviously funny Lmbo
Yeah, I had a good laugh too at the Boobs and Devil in this video ... Ha ha ha ...
funny edit :) i like it
Glad to see you made this, I mentioned I did the same thing on Twitter with Seagate 8tb Externals. I use FreeNas still and with ZFS with 5 drives and a 10G network, I get an average transfer of 500M. I wouldn't rely on these compared to NAS drives, but for cheap storage for a media center, great choice.
It's my understanding that when a hard drive fails QA for various reasons, it gets sent back in the line for re-manufacture and gets tossed into one of these enclosures. This is why the warranty is usually shorter than a bare drive and they can be random on the inside for the style of drive you get.
these episodes are getting more entertaining and goofy! don't let the haters stop you! Your on a roll!
Yeah, cause you would have been able to return it after mangling that enclosure. What a genius. 🙂
I loved the humor (5:43). That's what makes this channel so enjoyable ...
I got mines for $130 each during the black Friday best buy sale. But the real sweetspot is the fact I got all three drives manufactured in Thailand which gave me 256mb cache on each drive. I've been shucking drives for years, I think bare hard drive cost so much is because it's expense to fix on a mass scale, when you shuck the hard drive it voids the warranty thus they won't have to spend money honoring the warranty, so they pass the savings onto you.
I've also use my local stop and shop promotional sale to buy Best Buy Giftcards so I save additional $120 net expense. That can buy a lot of potato chips.
Kind of reminds me of some stories of bogus returns that made the news a few years ago. Some one had bought a PS4 from Target I think it was and when they opened up the box all it had inside was a bunch of rocks. Some one had taking out the system and returned it with rocks to weigh the box down and the store clerks never inspected the item and later restocked it. Funny enough you could probably do the same with a shucked drive, just throw in some garbage cards for weight and look and keep the HD. I doubt most clerks could tell the difference from a HD from the guts of a toaster.
+xplus93 That reminds me of a time when Sega Dreamcast was having disc reading problems left and right. Somebody I know bought a new Dreamcast, and swapped the disk drives then returned the new Dreamcast with the bad part a day later and told them it was faulty and got cash back. Technically, he salvaged the new Dreamcast for spare parts and returned the new one back which had the manufacture number and everything so when the store clerk took it out to examine it, there was no indication that anything was swapped out. The store could return the system to the manufacture and get another one or a refund.
"I got mines ..." mines? What sorcery is this...? Vietnamese Ebonics?
It's not really that. People aren't buying "bare" drives on the consumer market. Years ago when there were the floods in Thailand harddrive prices increased by huge amounts. The price of drives went up as the supply went down, but when the supply went back up it was realized that the market can handle much higher prices. There is however much more demand on the consumer space for high capacity external drives, hence the more aggressive pricing. They're still warrantied like their bare drive counterparts. Then again, I would never RMA a hard drive myself, so it doesn't matter to me.
like for the drawing
The real problem is actually where the screw mounts are located. The sides are fine and you can put rails on them. However, if you try to mount it on the bottom, the screw hole spacing is not standardized like other drives.
I bought 4 of these hard drive last Black Friday and just got 1 of them is the Red one, all the other drives are White label. The same as the one you unboxed in this video.
However, all of them work great in my Synology Nas.
What about the 3re pin?
Oh my. I use an old 2006 Mac Mini as a home server, and it has been doing great, as long as I restart it at least roughly once every 6 months, and it has 2 4TB "My Book" drives (same cases as the current "easystore" drives)
I've done this so many times lol. Didn't know it had a name. Great video lol
Bestbuy recently had a sale on these drives, which I purchased 20 of them (lots of store visits and online purchases). All of them were White labeled as of 2/5/2018. I installed them in my FreeNAS server and they work fine...
Have a friend that worked at Western Digital and he told me those hard in the unit like yours are likely a 2nd grade level drive. This means that the drive is not close enough to spec to be considered a first drive.
I remember when became cost affective. It was around 2012. I used to build my own external drives to save money and one day I realized it was cheaper just to buy a pre-made external drives.
wow i payed for 4 tb $130 here in Canada it was on sell about 6 months ago
Love the look of total disappointment.
Love that screwdriver set where did you get it?
lowes
amzn.to/2DnjElc
@@Bytemybits Looked at the link you provided for the screwdriver set shown in the video and it doesn't look like it matches.
A few years ago, I bought four 4TB externals for cheap, around the same price ($119 each I think). A couple months after that, I sold the enclosures on ebay for $25 each.
NOTE: USE A GUITAR PICK OF AT LEAST 0.88mm thickness AND YOU WONT BREAK THE LITTLE TABS. Sooo, you could technically return it :P
OH AND YOU NEED 4 of them, just put them in where the tabs are (slide the pick back and fourth till you hear a slight click) and then once all four are done, slide the enclosure off.
12TB version of this is on sale for $179 at best buy right now
Love the I'm with stupid! Keep up the GREAT humor! Awesome!!
Just got a 8tb seagate since i filled up both of my 1tb and 2 tb with ps4 pkgs,movies and pc games
Solid video - amazing editing skills! lol - all seriousness, the info you shared about the drives was new to me. Thanks!
i liked the video too, and it was edited well, but to be honest, the editing done in this video could be done by someone as young as 11 years old, given they were told "this is how you trim, and this is how you cut"
it's not like there is anything, editing wise, that would be considered difficult to edit in this video...
thumbs up for the painting xd
Shucked my first western digital easy store.. Got a Red. I was pumped
About a year ago I picked up a 4TB WD FOR $75 @ STAPLES it was the last one they had but I couldn't pass it up.
When I shuck drives I treat the warranty like toilet paper. As long as the drive comes out I'm happy.
TechTaste
I was thinking the same... It's not exactly honest (legally it's fraud) to rip something to pieces, then reassemble and return it for a refund. I can't believe people actually think it's OK to do that.
ofc they are cheaper if they are not the same thing ... what i meant by this is that the wd reds have a better lifespan + theyr speed is verry good .. and there are even cheaper variants of wd like blue or wd green(caviar) but idk if you can find those in the 8 tb version ..
Hard drive lootboxes!
*WHY **_OPEN IT_** TO FIND OUT WHICH MODEL WHEN YOU CAN VERIFY THE MODEL BEFORE YOU MAKE THE PRODUCT INELIGIBLE FOR RETURN.... VIA SYSTEM INFO..?*
Like one guy said, test the enclosed drive with CrystalMark, HDD software and it will tell you the specifications and model. If it is the model you want carefully open the enclosure and save it for another HDD you want to power it with.
#1 Reason to Shuck a WD external drive, their stupid controller. I had one of these years ago (Like 1TB, maybe less age years ago) & after a few months the enclosure stopped working. I moved the drive & it worked fine but couldn't be used. I got another & tried using it but it didn't work either. I contacted WD & they said there's a hardware encryption unique to each individual controller so I could get a replacement controller but it would require me to reformat the drive. They said this was a security feature, which is stupid because anyone hooking up the drive through the controller can access all the data on it, any encryption to prevent that has to be user provided, & anyone trying to steal your data would either just steal the whole thing (it's not like it has any kind of mounting lock or anything). If you want to use the enclosure remove the drive, format it directly, then reconnect it. In my experience that makes it movable on 3 of the 4 controllers I had.
I can confirm that I recently shucked a slightly older WD external drive that was actually one of their NAS units in the 4TB size and inside it was a WD Red drive.
Jason, you should share your experince on the white labeled drives after pre-clearing them
Where I live, I'd need to do the exact opposite.. Internal HDDs are much, MUCH cheaper than external ones. Like for comparison a 1TB internal SATAIII SeaGate HDD costs ~53EUR. (on of the cheapest internal drives available). The absolutely cheapest external 1TB drive is a factory-refurbished B-stock Toshiba with a price of ~63EUR. At 4TB the difference is between 129EUR and 149EUR, with the internal being cheaper again. At 5TB the difference is 169EUR vs 209EUR with again the internal being cheaper. I couldn't find anything larger than 5TB at that particular store.
let me guess you brought this during the black friday sale, they always have a black friday sale on those, i got two 14tb drive i will be getting 6 of them this year for next black friday sale which will be 16tb or 18tb
Jason, you shuck the way I do. Balls to warranty. I've 4 WD "Whites" (the drive you got), 3 are well over a year old and still trucking.
I've got a Western Digital Mycloud and its grate to go with a Rasbery Pi media player. Also supports USB drives it you ever need more storage.
I'm shore servers are better for demanding users, but for your average consumer I think there over kill.
I did the same thing. This is a WD RED, White label drive. And it sounds like you heard about the voltage issue.
where to start? Byte my bits is hilarious; the video was super informative, and editing Jason is funny as hell. Not proud, but this made bong water get sprayed all over the place in a fit of laughter when the dastardly doodle happened. Great stuff, and thanks for being informative and hilarious!
One thing yu need to know, Best Buy is notorious to offer refurbish hard drives and external HD. That's why they are sometime cheaper. So please keep that in mind !
Best buy has the sale today
Very informative. Thanks for this.
Ps. Your voice is so soothing, i let your other videos autoplay as backround noise.
Nice lighting, editing and sound. Good job
Nice Ubiquiti jacket, thanks for the info too!
I was buying HD’s for my qnap yesterday at Fry’s. They were out of the WD red in 4TB size, but the salesman showed me an “HGST” NAS drive MADE by WD. Yeah, buddy! I think these might be what you have.
7200 w/64 cache for $99! I bought 2 and have my server up and almost configured.
i will start doing this, i have been burned by the proprietary boards failing on 90% of the ones i have purchased from seagate and WD.
I did like your artwork interlude.
Props, big guy !!
How do you know it is a red drive? You haven't even opened it!! Couldn't it be a white drive.
This would amazing for my Xbox one 😃
Do you know if those boards that come off would be useful in making a loose DVD or Blu-ray burner drive portable?
Sometimes, can't confirm any brand.
I just did this to an older 500G WD External "my book" - the power cord STB - tried another power cable, it was fine, so I figured, "what they hey, let me shuck this". turned out "green". Any idea what this is as opposed to white or red ??? Thanks for the informative and attention-keeping video ! Great job !
Mine came with a WD blue drive ..mine was T10 torx
I personally would use smaller hard drives in a raid array, so you then you gain performance and reliability.
I personally would use smaller hard drives in a raid array, so you then gain performance and reliability.
Why do they do this?
Hello, sorry to bother you with this, but you look like a real expert regarding usb HDs. Happens that I have a WD My Book 6TB and now is not working anymore. For some reason windows does not recognize the drive. I wen to every support page they have and several troubleshooting and nothing worked. Could you give some advice please? Regards from Lima, Perú
I like this idea but it is still and SMR drive with low write speeds as apposed to the standard platter drive which is a PMR drive with faster read.
i used to have one of these older model wd books and the enclosures suck. it fried on me so i took the drive out and put it in a dock and it works perfectly fine now. wd sucks.
do you only shuck WD? I know Seagate shows as UAS (usb attached scisi) when looking at diagnostic. So it would be worthless to shuck them
If you still have that housing can you please upload a vid where you remove the plastic wrap from it?
I protect the external enclosures so that I cab return failed drives.
Seagate and Samsung both use Seagate drives.
Why not sell the hardrive case?? Such a wast to throw a brand new perfectly working piece of equiptment away!
SocialHostage because it’s worth maybe $1
Great video topic. Got a chuckle over the editing freeze frame.
I used to do this with the WD passport drives to get 2.5" drives. WD got smart after all the UA-cam posts like yours saying to do it and they started to solder on a small connector so people couldn't use the drives in the future. So be forewarned WD DOES pay attention...
Nope. They made that change to save money. 2.5" drives are far more popular than 3.5" and run on very little power, and it makes financial sense to produce the 2.5" USB interface model. 3.5" doesn't make sense to do the same because of the lower volume of sales and the requirement of external power. Cheaper to just use a commercially available USB to SATA adapter.
Post the serial number on the external case or something. As I'm sure there is a way for WD to tell which is the cheap and which is the more expensive drive and onsell them cheaper in "sales"
The only thing thats going to be f*****g red is your forearm if that knife slips :-/
double parity? man that's some level of backup.
I tried to post this to reddit but perhaps because new user there not posting.
Just curious if anyone has run into case where they shucked an EasyStore 10TB (WDC WD100EMAZ-00WJTA0) and found the optical cable was missing. Just odd. This is the 2nd EasyStore that I've shucked in the last couple of days and just noticed that. looked around on the floor, etc and didn't see anything.
Guess must be a QC issue with WD in Thailand as the box was sealed as received from BestBuy. I don't need the light flashing on this particular drive since I shucked it and worst case I guess if I ever had to send back to WD I can take the optical cable from the first shucked drive and rebuild it (however Jason from Byte My Bits said he sent the bare drive back and they sent him a WD MyBook 10TB).
Anyway just finished doing an extensive examination attached to the computer and shucked the drive and now in my NAS running badblocks and SMART tests on the two drives.
I have a 3rd one to shuck but I'm out of room in my NAS so I'll keep it as a desktop drive until I have to replace one in the NAS.
This is how I got my ps4 a 2 TB drive from Seagate and it works great.
I hate deleting games to download a new one.
same here . how big can PS4 take up to ? I have 1 tb
How come you never mention the molex to SATA power cable are taping the third power pin on hardrive to make them work when most the White hard drives won’t just plug n play way for most people
i believe these drives are binned from a lower quality set. i still like the idea tho
Mr family acted line I was crazy for shucking a dozen $110 5TB USB3.0 drives for my server. I'm definitely going for 8TB next time
do i have to convert it to gpt once inside my pc before it shows up or?
Does that drive still work to this day??
My server completely runs off torn apart hard drives one was the Western Digital my cloud and the rest of portable hard drives 4tb wd red, 4tb and 1tb seagate 2.5” portable
Same with my laptop has three 2.5” inch Seagate 2 TB drives torn apart portable hard drives
ive done this a couple of times prices of disks are crazy.
I did this and is not detected by my computer at all. Any help? is not showing in BIOS nor in disk manager
you need to block the third pin from the left (next to the data) of the power plug from making contact with the power plug. simple electrical tape fix.
i use the wd my book external hard drive fine in its original but when I shuck it out and install in my pc, it doesnt recognize the hard drive. Do u have to do anything before installing to the pc?
Street word is that it is WD Red with white label.
Some that I have seen change the connector on the drive to stop you using them as internal drives
external hard drive cheaper than internal ones??? lol
here where I live they go for almost double the internal ones...
How do you use this drive. I took a MyBook apart and tried to format the drive for use in a usb enclosure and the 3tb drive only yielded 2tb. Couldn't get the rest of the drive to do anything. Like it was locked
Does this thing has like fans? The non destroyed. Because i need cheap storage without a server, just to have it runned 24/7 connected to my Nvidia shield
Do you know if Seagate does the same thing with their ironwolf drives?
no they don't
No why would they put an enterprise drive in an ultra-low-end consumer product.
Ironwolf are not enterprise. Exos are.
Sadly that method often means that you end up with no warranty.
HAHA Ok I thought I was the only one doing this.
A pair of pliers can easily remove the side pins. Need a video on that screwdriver kit.
Lar Ada-Koski yeah. No need for torx.