3 ms·

does that only include SSDs, or does it include HDDs as well?

• jacquesm 8mo ago
  It includes all forms of storage except for USB devices, GPUs and high end CPUs. The latter you can still get but you're going to have some severe sticker shock.
  • antonyh 8mo ago
    Maybe shucking USB HDDs is the short-term answer.
    • M95D 8mo ago
      Is that still possible? Aren't they native USB with no adapter?
      • ErneX 8mo ago
        Those drives are SATA inside the case.
        • jacquesm 8mo ago
          That depends on the brand. The lower priced brands, yes, those can be SATA, the more vertically integrated companies also make custom PCBs that just have USB-C without any SATA interface exposed internally.
          • ErneX 8mo ago
            I see, but if you plan on shucking you obviously get ones you know are able to.
          • zozbot234 8mo ago
            It's probably feasible to make a "mass storage USB in, SATA protocol out" smart adapter board.
          • antonyh 8mo ago
            I've shucked WD MyBook drives, just a plain SATA inside. I guess that it's cheaper to have a stock drive and a cheap SATA-USB adaptor in a shell than do custom electronics. I've not heard of any that are otherwise, but I've only done a few. I suppose it's possible that they could solder them in or have custom electronics but I would have thought that rare. It's frequently discussed on Reddit too, so there's plenty of folk doing this.
            • jacquesm 8mo ago
              Do you mean the big ones or the SSD ones?
              • antonyh 8mo ago
                The big ones with a separate power brick, I've not looked inside the smaller USB-powered ones. My interest was in the >8Gb desktop drives. I'd imagine they're the same deal, but hard to say from the outside. I did have a part of one at one point, a USB-to-SATA circuit board that was useful for adhoc connecting 2.5" drives, but I can't recall if that came from an prebuilt or an old BYOD enclosure. I have a old WD small one that's kinda faulty (plugged it in then put it down heavily, it's not been right since), I should pop it open just to see what's inside, but it's older than the USBC models so could easily have changed. In any case, I don't think AI is eating the stock of slow laptop HDDs, so I'm not sure there's any need to buy these just for shucking.
                • jacquesm 8mo ago
                  Ok. So I have a bunch them here, different sizes, both SSD and spinning rust. The big ones are all consumer grade drives with a little adapter board like you describe. The small ones are a mix of a single custom board with a USB connector and adapter board based ones. The tell tale is the outer dimension in the length, if the case is a little bit longer than a standard drive you have a very good chance of having one with an adapter board if it is the same or even smaller than the standard format then almost all of them are custom boards. The really nice ones have NVME guts in them that you can immediately repurpose.
• deleted 8mo ago
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• antonyh 8mo ago
  I read it as both, but UK suppliers have stock of various SATA HDDs available in large and small sizes. It's hard to say if prices will rocket or availability decline, or both. I don't normally advocate panic-buying, but if it's needed now is the time. I have one NAS spare on hand, I don't want or need a drawer full of them, but it'll be a royal pain if I do and can't get parts.
  • zozbot234 8mo ago
    Lower performance/capacity consumer drives might be comparatively safe because there's Chinese end-to-end production capacity for those. Of course the price can still increase, but probably not that much.
    • antonyh 8mo ago
      Admittedly I've not been tracking price, only availability, and only in the size I might need.