Anyone buy external drives then remove them?

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MiniKnight

Well-Known Member
Mar 30, 2012
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NYC
I saw this post on servethehome about external versus internal drives. Is anyone using this strategy during the thai flooding? Many deals look cheaper on external drives now and internal drives have shorter warranties than when that post was made.

Are there going to be more posts like that? I like the cost analysis. Seems funny to think that that post assumed there would be less expensive 3TB drives by now.
 

sotech

Member
Jul 13, 2011
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Australia
There are a large number of people I'm aware of on various forums who have done so... if you do decide to do it just make sure that you thoroughly test the drive before busting it out of the casing and losing the warranty! Many of the casings are designed to break when you open them (little plastic tabs snap off) so that there's zero chance of making a warranty claim.
 

Jeggs101

Well-Known Member
Dec 29, 2010
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Does taking an external drive out break the drive or just the chassis?
 

sotech

Member
Jul 13, 2011
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Australia
Does taking an external drive out break the drive or just the chassis?
Some of the 2.5" externals I have seen have had the internal SATA-USB adapter soldered onto the drive itself which renders the drive pretty much unusable as an internal drive once you take it out of the chassis; I haven't seen that on 3.5" drives yet. In the post above I was referring to the enclosure which breaks rather than the drive.
 

Incroyable HULK

New Member
Mar 31, 2012
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Funny you ask... I just bought 2x 3TB Seagate GoFlex External Hard Drives (for 169$ CAD each) and I removed one of them from the enclosure. The interesting part is that the drive inside is a Barracuda XT 7200RPM with 64Mb of cache and best of all a warranty check with Seagate on the bare drive show a 5-years warranty! Lol, the GoFlex is only 2-years warranty. :cool:
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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Wow... wonder if they will honor that. That is a HUGE find.
 

Incroyable HULK

New Member
Mar 31, 2012
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Might be the consequence of the restructuring after the floods in Thailand... they probably make less models. I must point out that the serial number on the enclosure and on the drive are never the same. Anyway I keep the original enclosure (and use the USB3 dock!) just in case.
 
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Incroyable HULK

New Member
Mar 31, 2012
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Absolutely NOT! I wouldn't want to do that. The first part is to remove the plastic stripe surrounding the side and top of the enclosure but then I was stuck... so I found this video

[video=youtube;iN2ikVYBLK8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN2ikVYBLK8[/video]

The CLICKs and POP sounds are loud and frightening in the video but it ain't that bad.