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If you're trying to bring a new drive to market (and even for many capacities, they get refreshed regularly if only to cut platters or find new ways to cut cost

If you're trying to bring a new drive to market (and even for many capacities, they get refreshed regularly if only to cut platters or find new ways to cut costs), and your firmware isn't ready for prime time as an internal drive, you can still ship it as an external drive earlier because you have a good idea of how the controller is going to treat the drive. Not only do the external drives tend to be the end of the waterfall in terms of quality, manufacturers also may ship with firmware problems that would be a stop ship if it was packaged for nearline or desktop. Don't ask me how I know this.

muro 7y ago
I was always wondering how external drives can be cheaper than internal. This explains. Thank you.
- gambiting 7y ago
  Yeah, and massively cheaper too. I bought a 5TB passport drive for £71 recently, an equivalent capacity desktop drive would be at least £200. The price disparity is insane.
themaninthedark 7y ago
And then consumers use external drives as a backup method...
- rpcope1 7y ago
  Yes, if there's a take away for me, having seen how the sausage is made, it's far and above worth grabbing as NAS or nearline SATA drive and jamming it in a good SATA enclosure instead of buying a drive that's already in an enclosure if you want peace of mind.
ipython 7y ago
Didn’t backblaze do exactly this (shuck drives from external enclosures) when they couldn’t buy enough drives on the open market after the tsunami?
- chx 7y ago
  They did but with 3.5" drives which were not USB specific. This is done to save space and noone cares for space with a 3.5" drive. If you ship with a converter board it is impossible to make it this small.
- pilsetnieks 7y ago
  And they themselves said that it's not a good idea, it simply was a time of desperation. They're not shucking externals now, now that proper drives are available. Also they have a lot more tolerance for disk failure than almost anyone.

muro 7y ago

I was always wondering how external drives can be cheaper than internal. This explains. Thank you.

gambiting 7y ago
Yeah, and massively cheaper too. I bought a 5TB passport drive for £71 recently, an equivalent capacity desktop drive would be at least £200. The price disparity is insane.

themaninthedark 7y ago

And then consumers use external drives as a backup method...

rpcope1 7y ago
Yes, if there's a take away for me, having seen how the sausage is made, it's far and above worth grabbing as NAS or nearline SATA drive and jamming it in a good SATA enclosure instead of buying a drive that's already in an enclosure if you want peace of mind.

ipython 7y ago

Didn’t backblaze do exactly this (shuck drives from external enclosures) when they couldn’t buy enough drives on the open market after the tsunami?

chx 7y ago
They did but with 3.5" drives which were not USB specific. This is done to save space and noone cares for space with a 3.5" drive. If you ship with a converter board it is impossible to make it this small.
pilsetnieks 7y ago
And they themselves said that it's not a good idea, it simply was a time of desperation. They're not shucking externals now, now that proper drives are available. Also they have a lot more tolerance for disk failure than almost anyone.