4 ms·

I always wondered they were able to sell these devices so cheaply. I recently bought 2 4tb ones to take the hard drives out as they were each $30 cheaper than b

by aeleos 9y ago

I always wondered they were able to sell these devices so cheaply. I recently bought 2 4tb ones to take the hard drives out as they were each $30 cheaper than buying a regular 4tb hardrive.

jquast 9y ago
You're not kidding. We recently bought a few dozen of them from bestbuy, ripped them apart for the disks, and put the disks in a NAS.
- grawlinson 9y ago
  This is apparently common practise amongst data hoarders, especially after the flooding affected HDD production in Asia.
  - whoopdedo 9y ago
    I considered that but gut instinct told me the cost had to be cut from somewhere and made me afraid of the failure rate.
    - aeleos 9y ago
      You would think that but at least with the 8tb version they are often standard red drives that look the exact same as any other. It could be just that since they are their own drives, they can afford to price the hard drives much closer to their manufacturing costs.
      - mikepurvis 9y ago
        I think it's standard price discrimination— internal drives are often bought alongside other expensive equipment as part of a "build" so that purchaser is a lot less price sensitive overall than someone who walks into Best Buy looking for a USB3 drive to use with Time Machine.
      - curun1r 9y ago
        Or the drives could be refurbished, returned or otherwise unable to be sold as new. Based on the pricing, that always seemed like the most likely explanation.
    - stordoff 9y ago
      Worth checking the model before doing so - I've had at least one drive where the USB connection was built into the drive itself (i.e. no SATA connection). I think it was a 2.5" drive, but I'd presume it's at least possible with a 3.5" drive.
    - chrisper 9y ago
      The cost cutting comes from the warranty. You would have to send back the whole disk with the case as opposed to just RMA a disk.
djsumdog 9y ago
I pulled some old MyBook hard drives out of their cases and discovered they were unreadable via a standard SATA connection. They were older MyBooks designed for XP, so I thought it was just having trouble because they were using 4k sectors. I found some information that claimed the older MyBooks would AES encrypt the data (even if you never setup a password) making the data totally inaccessible if the factory enclosure ever broke. Fuck that shit. I pulled the drive back in and copied everything off, then formatted the disk from a real PC and threw that shit away. Today I always buy separate disks and enclosures that allow direct disk access.
- AgentME 9y ago
  I bet they do the encryption like that so that you can quickly securely wipe them (just drop the encryption key) or easily add a password to the encryption later (just encrypt the encryption key by a password). It's too bad if it's completely unusable without the enclosure, but that general technique is one that I'm a huge fan of.
- yeukhon 9y ago
  If the claim is true, would you rather someone pull it out and access your data? This is like breaking HSM. So why “fuck that shit”? I hear a lot of people worrying not enough encryption. So perhaps take this as a positive thing??? Having an extra layer of protection is never a bad idea.
  - ggg9990 9y ago
    Not everyone cares about encryption first. Personally, I’d rather have my entire HDD published on nytimes.com than lose the data on it.
    - otp124 9y ago
      > Personally, I’d rather have my entire HDD published on nytimes.com than lose the data on it. If your data is that valuable, surely you were already taking backups/snapshots of it. Right?
berbec 9y ago
Backblaze didn't pioneer this, but they sure took it to a new level! [1] 1: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/

by aeleos 9y ago

I always wondered they were able to sell these devices so cheaply. I recently bought 2 4tb ones to take the hard drives out as they were each $30 cheaper than buying a regular 4tb hardrive.

jquast 9y ago

You're not kidding. We recently bought a few dozen of them from bestbuy, ripped them apart for the disks, and put the disks in a NAS.

grawlinson 9y ago
This is apparently common practise amongst data hoarders, especially after the flooding affected HDD production in Asia.
- whoopdedo 9y ago
  I considered that but gut instinct told me the cost had to be cut from somewhere and made me afraid of the failure rate.
  - aeleos 9y ago
    You would think that but at least with the 8tb version they are often standard red drives that look the exact same as any other. It could be just that since they are their own drives, they can afford to price the hard drives much closer to their manufacturing costs.
    - mikepurvis 9y ago
      I think it's standard price discrimination— internal drives are often bought alongside other expensive equipment as part of a "build" so that purchaser is a lot less price sensitive overall than someone who walks into Best Buy looking for a USB3 drive to use with Time Machine.
    - curun1r 9y ago
      Or the drives could be refurbished, returned or otherwise unable to be sold as new. Based on the pricing, that always seemed like the most likely explanation.
  - stordoff 9y ago
    Worth checking the model before doing so - I've had at least one drive where the USB connection was built into the drive itself (i.e. no SATA connection). I think it was a 2.5" drive, but I'd presume it's at least possible with a 3.5" drive.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    The cost cutting comes from the warranty. You would have to send back the whole disk with the case as opposed to just RMA a disk.

djsumdog 9y ago

I pulled some old MyBook hard drives out of their cases and discovered they were unreadable via a standard SATA connection. They were older MyBooks designed for XP, so I thought it was just having trouble because they were using 4k sectors. I found some information that claimed the older MyBooks would AES encrypt the data (even if you never setup a password) making the data totally inaccessible if the factory enclosure ever broke. Fuck that shit. I pulled the drive back in and copied everything off, then formatted the disk from a real PC and threw that shit away. Today I always buy separate disks and enclosures that allow direct disk access.

AgentME 9y ago
I bet they do the encryption like that so that you can quickly securely wipe them (just drop the encryption key) or easily add a password to the encryption later (just encrypt the encryption key by a password). It's too bad if it's completely unusable without the enclosure, but that general technique is one that I'm a huge fan of.
yeukhon 9y ago
If the claim is true, would you rather someone pull it out and access your data? This is like breaking HSM. So why “fuck that shit”? I hear a lot of people worrying not enough encryption. So perhaps take this as a positive thing??? Having an extra layer of protection is never a bad idea.
- ggg9990 9y ago
  Not everyone cares about encryption first. Personally, I’d rather have my entire HDD published on nytimes.com than lose the data on it.
  - otp124 9y ago
    > Personally, I’d rather have my entire HDD published on nytimes.com than lose the data on it. If your data is that valuable, surely you were already taking backups/snapshots of it. Right?

berbec 9y ago

Backblaze didn't pioneer this, but they sure took it to a new level! [1] 1: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/