8TB Drives, why is external cheaper than internal?

azazl187 · 16 Mar 2019 at 08:16

IT Troll said:
Well personally I’d rather spend 10 minutes taking the drive out of the enclosure rather than needing an external power supply and messy USB cabling. The drive would also be seen as a removable/ejectable device by the O/S. In which case you may as well leave it as an external drive.

Fair enough, i was just going on the fact that it looks like you cant use them as internal drives if removed from the enclosure

iamtheoneneo · 16 Mar 2019 at 17:18

azazl187 said:
Fair enough, i was just going on the fact that it looks like you cant use them as internal drives if removed from the enclosure

But you can.
The 3.5 pin applies to SOME computers only and the fix takes literally 5 seconds if your PC doesn't boot it.

My HP NAS for example took the drives with zero problems.

edscdk · 16 Mar 2019 at 17:41

My guess would be its simply market forces, obviously there is a decent markup on the bare drives

DeanT77 · 16 Mar 2019 at 17:56

Noticed this today myself, cheaper for me to get an 8TB external than a 6TB internal.

azazl187 · 17 Mar 2019 at 09:56

iamtheoneneo said:
But you can.
The 3.5 pin applies to SOME computers only and the fix takes literally 5 seconds if your PC doesn't boot it.

My HP NAS for example took the drives with zero problems.

Oh right cool. Thanks for making that clear

bimbleuk · 17 Mar 2019 at 10:15

Supply and demand maybe but also RPM, Cache and warranty length will affect the price.

IT Troll · 17 Mar 2019 at 14:20

bimbleuk said:
Supply and demand maybe but also RPM, Cache and warranty length will affect the price.

The drives are identical so RPM and cache are identical. The retail version of the internal drives do tend to have 3-years warranty. Whilst OEM internal drives and retail external drives have 2-years. So in this case the extra year of warranty is costing ~£90.

One other thing to consider with these 8TB drives is that they are noisier than smaller capacity drives. So this may be a factor depending on the intended use.

An 8 TB or larger internal hard drive makes more noise than a smaller capacity drive
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=15108

Acoustic levels for My Book and My Cloud devices with WD 8TB drives
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=15113

bimbleuk · 17 Mar 2019 at 14:50

REDs are quiet in my NAS compared to the desktop drives I used with for a while. I had them so tried them but a couple failed after a few months possibly due to harmonics of being closely stacked and so I went RED to hopefully alleviate any vibration related failures over time.

Buffalo2102 · 19 Mar 2019 at 21:51

I needed a couple of 6TB drives and decided to take a punt on a couple of WD Mybooks at £100 each. Both had WD blues in and I can't find them as bare drives for less than £150 each. That's a £100 saving on two drives.

Both drives are quiet and perform well so far and I realise that I basically have no warranty now but I can afford for one to fail, replace it with new and still not have spent as much as I would have if I'd bought the internal versions.

kamdeux · 20 Mar 2019 at 08:14

The WD Duo's that were cheap for a while at some retailers have the same warranty on those drives as the standard internal drives so much so that for me it was cheaper to buy a few of those and get 8TB drives when I was originally looking for 6TB units. Those enclosures are designed for the drives to be removed so you can easily take them out with no damage being done, I don't understand the commercials of it all but I'm happy for it as upgrading my Nas is an expensive project so this helped.

AtaRo · 20 Mar 2019 at 13:56

Buffalo2102 said:
I needed a couple of 6TB drives and decided to take a punt on a couple of WD Mybooks at £100 each. Both had WD blues in and I can't find them as bare drives for less than £150 each. That's a £100 saving on two drives.

Both drives are quiet and perform well so far and I realise that I basically have no warranty now but I can afford for one to fail, replace it with new and still not have spent as much as I would have if I'd bought the internal versions.

Did you try wdidle3 utility on your WD Blue drive?

A couple of my WD Blue from WD My Book does not work with wdidle3 utility and this newer Blue drive has a park time of 8s only and can't be change via the utility.

Buffalo2102 · 20 Mar 2019 at 14:58

Yes, I tried wdidle3 but it didn't work, as you say. The drives have been sat in my PC for a couple of days now and the cycle count has stayed at 200 since I put them in. I'm using them just for storage in a Drive Bender pool though so that may affect how the drives park their heads.

I also have an older pair of blues that I bought second-hand more than a year ago and I just chucked into my server. They are part of a BTRFS pool and despite being in daily use since I got them the cycle counts are both around 100000. Not all of the blues seem to be as bad as the greens for this issue.

IT Troll · 21 Mar 2019 at 07:12

I found the same, wdidle3 doesn’t work on the newer 6TB blues. I tried on a number of different motherboards with different controllers and in different compatibility modes. Just wouldn’t have it. However, if you are putting the drive in a desktop system I don’t think it is really an issue, after all the blues are intended and profiled for desktop use. If you are putting the drives in an NAS then perhaps it is more of an issue which is why WD will sell you a more expensive red.

Jamin280672 · 21 Mar 2019 at 12:30

I brought an external drive for this very reason, £200+ for an 8gb internal drive, I paid £140 for an external, tested it was working when I got it, unplugged it, opened it up and set it as an internal drive, saved myself £60. Go figure.