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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.
by 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 agoThis is apparently common practise amongst data hoarders, especially after the flooding affected HDD production in Asia.
- whoopdedo 9y agoI 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 agoYou 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 agoI 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 agoOr 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 agoWorth 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 agoThe 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.