Sips'Have you ever bough an external hardrive only to take the disk out of it?
slazer2auYes. Be aware there will be some pin blocking you need to do to make it work right because vendors know this trick.
Yeah typical :P
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
Same here. A brand new modular Seasonic Platinum PSU (back in 2018 when I built the PC) also needed the 3v3 pin covered. I just use Kapton tape over the pin to avoid any destructive methods or having to use sketchy molex connectors.
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.
Well. They do
I have opened other enclosures and found a custom board on the hard disk.
Yup. And if you want to look up more info on how to do it correctly, look up hard drive shucking.
Thanks!
infinitevalencemany times, shucking is a very valid way to get large format disks for cheaper than retail NAS parts. But be aware of what your buying and make sure that the disk your getting if its a white label is a reliable disk. WD Easystore/Mybook are generally good, as are the larger format Seagate external.
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
Amazing, I didn’t know they did this
BeatTakeshiSame happened to me on a WD black
Just why don’t they omit the casing inside the case too?
Which external drive did you buy? This must be a fairly recent change.
entropicdriftIMO, if you want the beast deals right now on a 12+ TB HDD, you should use serverpartdeals.com instead. I’ve got 2 manufacturer recertified 14 TB enterprise-grade drives from them and it was way cheaper than buying any 14 TB external drive.
Im based in scandinavia so wont be able to buy from there, but thanks anyway!
rmukHey. Heyhey. Heyheyhey. Have you ever noticed that your warships have giant barcodes on them? It’s so that when they return to port they can scan the navy in.
HGST Ultrastar He10 | HUH721010ALE604 | 0F27488 | 512e | 2,5 M MTBF | 10 TB SATA 6,0 Gb/s 7200 RPM 256 MB cache 3,5 inch | Helium Platform Enterprise harde schijf (vernieuwd) : Amazon.nl: Elektronica
HGST Ultrastar He10 | HUH721010ALE604 | 0F27488 | 512e | 2,5 M MTBF | 10 TB SATA 6,0 Gb/s 7200 RPM 256 MB cache 3,5 inch | Helium Platform Enterprise harde schijf (vernieuwd) : Amazon.nl: Elektronica
You might want to look up SMR vs CMR, and why it matters for NASes. The gist is that cheaper drives are SMR, which work fine mostly, but can time out during certain operations, like a ZFS rebuild after a drive failure.
Sorry don’t remember the details, just the conclusion that’s it’s safer to stay away from SMR for any kind of software RAID
ares35i bought a few smr drives, knowing they were smr. they were cheaper, a lot cheaper than the same amount of space in cmr. used only for static media storage, so that's not a big deal, really., but holy hell was it slow getting stuff on them initially.
i have a few self-powered externals that are also smr (quite common with those as they use 2.5in notebook hdd). when those things have to start shuffling bits around, sustained write speeds to those fall well under what even usb2 can send.
Yup. /r/Datahoarder guided me right. Got two of the recommended model of MyBook and shucked them.
This was 2-3 years ago. Disks are still going strong in my NAS.
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.
BjörnI like the trash to hook up any hard drive via USB.
Yeah one of these is literally my primary USB 3.0 to SATA adapter
But you don’t need 8 of them, do you?
You never know.
Stop staring at my cable box. I don’t have a problem!
bunny_funeralafter doing it for a few drives and observing the failure rates of said drives i just buy drives with warranties now. i’ve got a few shucked drives still kicking around though.
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 RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity[Thread #769 for this sub, first seen 28th May 2024, 15:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
GormadtI’ve shucked a few drives in the past but when there was a big sale on hard drives awhile back I finished decking my NAS out with 8TB drives that weren’t shucked as they came out to be cheaper than the ones in enclosures at the time.
The main downside is warranty really and some of the drives from enclosures need to have the power blocked on one of the pins to work (can’t remember which sorry) due to the type of drive they are.
i bought a big hdd recently on impulse... a clearance sale. it was really, really cheap. with the thinking that i could 'shuck' it because i'm short on space in a couple storage systems. i checked. i can, but i haven't. hell, i haven't even used it yet other than to run a full smart diag on it, followed by a full format and a read/write verify. took days. then i put it back in the box and have basically forgotten about it until now.
you have to be careful on what models you buy. some have usb built onto the controller board (no internal sata) or other things (e.g. encryption chip, weird power) that make it more difficult or even impossible to use the internal drive in an environment other than the enclosure it ships in.
astrskYes. It’s a viable way to save money if you use a site like https://shucks.top/
Yes. It’s a viable way to save money if you use a site like https://shucks.top/
I haven’t bought them specifically for that, but I have harvested drives from them. A lot of times, you’ll have to destroy the enclosure to get to the drive. If you’re ok with that, go for it.
Yup, with 2,5" Seagates. Reused the enclosure with smaller used enterprise ssds to make cheap USB sticks.
lnxtx (xe/xem/xyr)Be aware. Some external USB drives, like WD Elements, have built-in USB controllers. So they don’t have SATA connector.
Good to know! thanks
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?
norbertI'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.
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.
Ok, so does that also mean we can check the SMART parameters now?
Previously, the USB interface effectively blocked access to them.
Faceman🇦🇺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.
I think this depends on whether it’s a 3.5 or 2.5 inch drive inside. To my knowledge, all external drives with a 3.5 inch drive inside are shuckable and have a standard SATA interface. With the compact drives that have a 2.5 inch drive inside, many will have a native usb interface and no SATA connector.
It makes sense as 3.5" sata drives are used for many many applications so why make something new just for external drives? With 2.5, however there are very few devices that use spinning sata drives in this form factor. It makes a lot more sense to build the USB interface directly on the drive since their main and possibly only application is external drives.
I could be wrong, but this has been my experience.
Possibly linuxI thought you were talking about the platter
Not specifically, no. When I did change to building my own NAS, I cracked open my older 4TB backup drive to use as a spare.
BizarrolandIt's called shucking and it happens a lot especially in the home server home lab community.
learn something new every day :)
paraphrandIt’s a bummer that hard drives are priced this way. It’s been common for a few decades now.
λλλThe best ones for this are the ones from Best Buy. Easystore.
xavier666Don’t you think it’s wild that a hard drive, which is just chilling inside its case, suddenly has its innards spilled out using a screwdriver, and dumped into a 24/7 NAS with other hard disks.
A bit inhumane if you ask me.
It’s totally inhumane but also no living thing was harmed, so - all good.
Just that those ext disk aren’t built for 24/7 usage. They will die faster and generate bigger costs over time 😉
My oldest ones have been running 24/7 since 2018 and tons of people have been doing the same. Where’s your data to suggest that these drives fail faster than any other?
If you look around and are informed then you can easily purchase drives that are designed for Nas use. I shucked three eight terabyte Western digital external hard drives and they were all WD reds, but because of the deal they were running they were $60 a piece cheaper inside of the shell than they were outside of the shell.
NOOO who would ever do that. It
a lot of people it seems :>
This is what I did when I had to refurb a laptop. Swap the drives, reinstall the OS, snd hand it all to the user. All your files are on this usb drive.
Thats when you find out who understands folder structure and who doesn’t.
I guess it shows how out of touch (old) I am that it’s completely bewildering to me that there could be people who do not understand folders … on a computer. Phones, tablets, yeah, I get that, those actively make it harder and harder to access the folder structure. But computers?
TheHolmWhy 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.