this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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IMO, no pre-built externals are worth shucking unless they're significantly cheaper than bare retail drives.
About externals and why I recommend not buying them anymore.
This is from a Q&A with an anonymous industry insider who confirmed what others and I have speculated for years.
Q: Is it true that the drives in externals can be: overstock, overruns, binned (out of spec drives), from cancelled orders.
A: Yes to all of it. Externals are the lowest bins above the [redated] (Edit: binned rives} we sell to third parties. It’s whatever is leftover. They have less warranty because they aren’t expected to last as long.
My notes: The first part is supported by what I posted in this thread, https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/11jmot5/to_those_asking_what_drive_is_inside_my_wd/ which has a link to WD's disclosure about this.
It's been confirmed by another source that the binned drives, are drives that are Out Of Spec, flashed with special firmware that can't be updated and is no longer supported by the manufacturer. This is source of SOME of the unbranded drives from certain resellers.
[New edit not in the original thread] The above paragraph is referring to another thread where the OP bought a refurbed internal drive, not an external and it was incorrectly flashed.
Q: Is it true that in a given generation of HDD, when reduced capacities are released at the same time, you can sometimes tell from the model number that it’s the same hardware inside as a full capacity drive” To be used in externals or sold to resellers?
A: Yes, see above. The [redated] (My edit: XX drive size) were reconfigured for 12 and 14TB. The [redacted] went all the way down to 10TB to my knowledge. We just disable specific bad heads in the factory and rewrite the tracks. It’s an automated process obviously, but we can internally look up all that history on any serial number.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/146hb9k/information_about_cmr_to_smr_manufacturer/
This is from the link about WD externals referred to above
To those asking "What drive is inside my WD external?". From WD...
Drive Type Inside of a WD External Drive Enclosure
The drive inside of a Western Digital enclosure may vary depending on application.
• Depending on model, the internal drive included an external enclosure could have a SATA or native USB interface.
• We can only guarantee drive capacity.
We cannot guarantee a particular internal drive model, data interface, rotational speed, power consumption, transfer speed or cache size included in the external hard drive enclosure.
• We can only guarantee a Western Digital Drive.
We cannot guarantee a particular enclosure will have a WD colored drive inside.
• Dismantling any single-drive external enclosure to obtain this information will void the warranty of the hard drive.
Please refer to the Western Digital Warranty Policy.
• Interface and cache of the drives inside the external enclosure does not affect the performance or the data transfer rate of the external drive unit.
https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/13652
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/11jmot5/to_those_asking_what_drive_is_inside_my_wd/