"Shucked" Hard Drives

[Bruno_A]

Hello all,

 

A while ago, I started noticing that WD USB external drives are stupid cheap, compared to "normal" internal drives. For example, you can get a WD Elements 12TB external drive for £200, however, an internal drive with the same capacity, will cost you £395 for the WD Gold variant, or £395 for the WD Red variant. These external hard drives tend to go on sale, on Amazon, quite often, and ever since I first saw these drives at really low prices when on sale, I thought they were too good to be true, and that the hard drive in it was probably not of the highest quality. I recently watched a video on YouTube (and then, some more), about these external drives, and it seems like some of them, the older ones, I believe, were actually WD Red drives, however, the newer ones, are relabeled WD Red drives, or so people claim. Now, if they are straight up WD Red drives, either Red labeled, or "White" labeled drives, why are they so cheap? I know that depending on how you're using them, if you take them out of the enclosure, you may need to do a pin modification in the power connector, as otherwise, the drive won't be powered on, and therefore recognized. Anyway, does anyone have information on this, that would explain the low prices? I'm wondering if these external drives are something to keep an eye on, on Black Friday?

[Scruffy90]

I've had luck shucking easystores. I got drives that actually had the red label and did not need any mods. I believe the reason theyre so cheap is because they come with a shorter warranty than what you'd get from WD directly and I think it may have something to do with bestbuy, but i'm unsure of the latter

[aisle9]

13 hours ago, bruny06 said:

Hello all,

 

A while ago, I started noticing that WD USB external drives are stupid cheap, compared to "normal" internal drives. For example, you can get a WD Elements 12TB external drive for £200, however, an internal drive with the same capacity, will cost you £395 for the WD Gold variant, or £395 for the WD Red variant. These external hard drives tend to go on sale, on Amazon, quite often, and ever since I first saw these drives at really low prices when on sale, I thought they were too good to be true, and that the hard drive in it was probably not of the highest quality. I recently watched a video on YouTube (and then, some more), about these external drives, and it seems like some of them, the older ones, I believe, were actually WD Red drives, however, the newer ones, are relabeled WD Red drives, or so people claim. Now, if they are straight up WD Red drives, either Red labeled, or "White" labeled drives, why are they so cheap? I know that depending on how you're using them, if you take them out of the enclosure, you may need to do a pin modification in the power connector, as otherwise, the drive won't be powered on, and therefore recognized. Anyway, does anyone have information on this, that would explain the low prices? I'm wondering if these external drives are something to keep an eye on, on Black Friday?

Storage in general tends to be caught up in BF deals, and you can get a lot of value for your money.