Should You Shuck Hard Drives and SSDs? Still Worth it in 2023?

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Күн бұрын

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@nascompares Жыл бұрын

*Important* I am working on a master list of HDD/SSD Shucking! It currently covers well over 100 different USB Drives from WD and Seagate. If you want to find out which drive is inside your WD My Book, Seagate Backup Plus, WD My Cloud or WD My Passort, you can find it here. *Hard Drive and SSD Shucking, Master List of Which Drives Are Inside USB Drives* - nascompares.com/guide/hard-drive-and-ssd-shucking-master-list-of-which-drives-are-in-which-usb-drive-2023/

@djashley2002 Жыл бұрын

I think that my biggest shucking success was last year when I was informed by a friend that the storage company he now works for was about to dump a load of brand new external drives containing 4tb WD Red Plus drives into their online store as refurbished after a production line problem slightly scuffed the cases (it was apparently cheaper for them to flog the units off as refurbished, rather than pay people to re-case the batch). As such I was able to fill a new NAS for just over half the price it was originally going to cost me and get a few spares just in case.

@invisiblian 9 ай бұрын

Insider buying

@jcb208 Жыл бұрын

Shuck 2 Seagate 16tb usb enclosures which had the exos drives inside, I registered the drives and initially I got the 5 year warranty, checked back a year later and the warranty had expired ,Still work great after 2 years and used the original enclosure with 4td drives

@ErraticPT Жыл бұрын

Price difference can be huge, I've shucked quite a few and price differences can easily be 30 to 60% or more cheaper. ie £330 for a bare drive or less than £200 for the equivalent capacity and identical performance. Only downside is you can't guarantee exactly what model you'll get but more often than not on 12TB or larger drives you'll get decent almost enterprise class drives for much less.

@esotericjahanism5251 Жыл бұрын

The best value is with used drives typically because external drives typically have way less power on hours and less TBW

@douglas6205 Жыл бұрын

I have several Nas ranging from 5bay up to 12 bay all have shucked drives from 8TB - 18tb. I saw on Amazon enterprise drives going cheap' I read the reviews and buyers saying they had been used, but due to the very low cost for what there were I took a chance bought 3x 20tb turned up all looking new that was approx. 3yrs ago had no issues with any. I then bought 2 more a yr later, they had clearly been used but installed them no issues like new Remember used enterprise HDD's might have just been swapped out because a system error showed up or upgrade as a consumer normally your requirements are a lot less than in an enterprise, so you can still use these drives for years

@m0erphium969 Жыл бұрын

Did that for a Upgrade from 2x8TB in RAID1 towards 3x8TB RAID5+Coldspare. So far this worked out very well. Had looked out for quite some time but then decided on a WD-MyBookDuos. On those changing the drives is even Part of the Usermanual. That way you can use the external housing as it Was intended with other drives if you like. Right now the shucked drive has over a year of running time in my qnap and i habe Zero issues. This drive is even 5-8 degrees cooler than the regular WD-Red. Would Do it again. Saved a lot of money at the time of buying!

@tonyvalenti6614 Жыл бұрын

I have three Synology NAS’s DS1821+, DS1621+, & DS920+ that have a total of 21 shucked drives including cold spares. Been running up to 2.5 years now with out a single glitch. This is the first time I tried it, but has worked well for me. Used 14 & 16TB drives from either WD Easystores or WD Elements. So, it’s been a positive experience thus far. And to your point I got the around Covid time, when everything was higher cost if not available at all.

@jrmbtr Жыл бұрын

Did you have to mod the pins for use in the Synology hardware or was it plug and play?

@tonyvalenti6614 Жыл бұрын

@@jrmbtr Nope, they were plug and play. Doing 21 of them, after learning how to shuck the first one I got pretty fast at it. I know shucking is polarizing for some, and I was unsure going in, but figured I’d find out for myself. Not knowing the outcome have to say I’m pretty impressed I haven’t had a single issue in 2.5 years. Plus, at a savings of at least $150+ per drive, and that many drives, at the time it was well worth giving it a try.

@angellike2234 Жыл бұрын

@@jrmbtr Good question but its MB/PSU dependant so it can vary even with same model though different MB/PSU combo's

@nadtz Жыл бұрын

For my 3.5 inch NAS drives I've been pretty happy with water panther's refurbished drives rather than deal with the potential cons of shucking. I bought 8 12tb drives from them for $125 apiece when retail exos drives were closer to $300 and have a warranty.

@ejharrop1416 Жыл бұрын

Interesting, thank you and good to learn about this topic, new to me. Opening the WD was also a nice demonstration of proper Oyster shucking. Cheers mate.

@Spreadie Жыл бұрын

Not sure if it's still the case, but WD limited the drive capacities of SMR models to 6TB. YMMV, but sticking to a minimum of 8TB usually avoids that one particular hurdle.

@garethr1970 Жыл бұрын

I've done this 3 times in the past few years, all WD Elements from Amazon (2 8TBs and a 20TB). I had to do the 'pin mod' on all of them before my PCs would recognise them though. I've not had any problems with them so far, but I have kept all the packaging and enclosures just in case I need them for a warranty return. I always keep an eye out for special offers on Amazon for the Elements drives as it's usually way cheaper than buying the bare drives.

@angellike2234 Жыл бұрын

Yeah totally agree, pin out has become common recently on this enclosure, less so if the connecting hardware MB/PSU etc is compliant

@chrislx2006 Жыл бұрын

I have a couple of shucked large capacity drives (WD) in my PC, but wouldn't put one in my NAS devices. I keep the enclosures until the warranty on the external drive runs out in the hope of being able to put it back inside if a claim is necessary but I'm not sure how successful that would be. Not had to find out so far! I'm currently dipping my toes into 10Gbe networking and ordered a suitable Intel X540-T2 NIC for the PC, and one NAS already has a 10Gbe connection so intend to run a cable (Cat7) directly between the two. I was looking for info on suitable switches to add later (QNAP QSW-M2108R-2C is favouritte ATM) but note you have not done any new vids on this subject for 10-12 months. So glad I found your channel it's a goldmine of info and seems incredibly under-subscribed for the quality of content it provides.

@donnanorth7324 Жыл бұрын

My understanding is that shucked drives can have the problem of not powering up unless you insulate one of the copper fingers. Not always, but if you buy 5, one may need the insulation on the finger. That should have been a con. I love your stuff. You explain well.

@evilcoleslaw 9 ай бұрын

This isn't really a nefarious thing to stop shucking though -- it's an enterprise remote administration feature in the newest SATA spec. When pin 3 gets voltage it cuts power to the rest of the drive circuitry. It's meant to be a short pulse to force a remote power cycle of the drive, essentially. Unfortunately pin 3 in the older SATA spec was delivering 3.3v and so most consumer power supplies will continually feed that pin 3.3v and keep the drive in a disabled state unless you either insulate pin 3 on the drive or use an adapter that purposely doesn't provide 3.3v power.

@JohnMuz1 Жыл бұрын

Keep them peeled, WD Elements Desktop Hard Drive 16TB was £ 183.24 on wd shop, why I did shucking a while ago...... will it ever get that cheap again?

@angellike2234 Жыл бұрын

Got to disagree, which is unusual on this site, the price difference is still massive. The drives near price parity are generally drive companies I would never consider. Great video though in its research. Personally saved £1000's even this year. (Excluding SSD's). A lot of warrantees are completely worthless depending on the company and how they try to dodge the warranty they give. The interface issue is a great point, though still with skill bi-passable. WD are generally white label depending on the stock maintenance or sales volumes and are on par with most mid to upper range models white labelled

@nascompares Жыл бұрын

I hugely appreciate the comment, POV and input! Happy to disagreed with!

@drewa4235 Жыл бұрын

The performance of wd externals when shucked are terrible. It’s not even the spindle speed. Wd tweaks the firmware to automatically shave at least 30% read and write speed off automatically. You can test this yourself. Start a large file transfer then do a smart test during the transfer. You will go from 180/200MB/s to over 250 for the duration of the transfer. What bothers me is these slow speeds are still at 7200rpm. So you get all of the noise and heat, but at a crappy speed.

@VividMac101 Жыл бұрын

I have a 10TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub external drive (purchased March 2020) that has a Seagate Barracuda Pro (which are now discontinued) inside. I also have two Seagate 1TB 2.5" external drives and both have what Seagate calls their "Mobile HDD series" inside. The drives inside each are identical but one of them is limited to SATA 2 speeds, not that it really matters though for my use. This info was obtained from the Crystal Disk Info software so I assume it's accurate. I haven't shucked these drives but I have shucked the following drives. I also have three old LaCie external hard drives from like pre-2010 I think and one of them had a 500GB Samsung drive inside and the other two had Seagate drives I think. Seagate of course acquired Samsung's HDD business in 2011 and then acquired LaCie in 2014 I think. I also have a 2.5" 500GB HGST hard drive that was taken from a launch PlayStation 4.

@michaelmorales9697 Жыл бұрын

@NASCompares just letting you know the chapters for this video are mislabeled - when you hover over a section of the video the sections description is for a totally different video. Great video as always - thanks ;)

@nascompares Жыл бұрын

Cheers for the heads up bud. Unsure why that is, but as soon as I get back to the desk, I'll resolve. Thanks again for spotting and sharing

@nascompares Жыл бұрын

Done!

@cloudrazor3621 Жыл бұрын

I was hopping you were gonna talk about NAS brands who are accepting shucked drives.

@KarlMeyer Жыл бұрын

WD artifically limit the speed to shucked 18TB's in my experience. From 270MB to 210MB. I don't shuck anymore for this reason.

@drescherjm Жыл бұрын

Is that 5400 RPM versus 7200 RPM? Meaning the shucked drive is 5400 RPM and the bare drive is 7200 RPM. With that said I am not yet purchasing any 18TB drives even at work where have between 100 and 200.

@KarlMeyer Жыл бұрын

@@drescherjm You could be right. It's hard to find any info on this. WDC_WD181KFGX-68AFPN0 (pro) vs WDC_WD180EDGZ-11B2DA0 (shucked).

@angellike2234 Жыл бұрын

Done the same have tested all not getting your findings, but it's a choice and getting similar or much better speeds reliability saving more than 50% cost makes it the only choice for me. Each person's experience will vary, as will their personal decisions based on this

@KarlMeyer Жыл бұрын

@@angellike2234 I made a reddit post about a while back called "Guess which drives are 18TB WD Red Pros & which are shucked 18TB WD Elements. I'm never shucking a drive again." Depending on how much you care, you can look it up and see my graphs. There were some interesting discussions that occurred in the comments.

@RJ_Cormac Жыл бұрын

I can't bring myself to do it, any warranty is gone when tearing that enclosure apart. They own it for better or worse.

@angellike2234 Жыл бұрын

Not necessarily the case using the correct tools, for example I-FIXIT sets makes it impossible to tell if you keep all the enclosure parts but if you are unsure don't do it

@bobbymoss6160 Жыл бұрын

I ended up just getting UltraStar DC HC550 16TBs because it's cheaper than buying Ext HDD and shucking them.

@INJOONKIM Жыл бұрын

A few years ago, I shucked LG branded 2.5 HDD and found that the internal Toshiba drive is not recognized by a Windows PC. It looks that the firmware doesn’t support SATA at all even it has a SATA port.

@nascompares Жыл бұрын

Hey Andrew (that's right, I remember you because your name is the same as my surname...what of it??). I had an annoyingly similar experience with an old "Creative Audio Player" back in 2011... I remember being LIVID when I found that the 320GB DRIVE was borderline useless outside of the enclosure! Cheers for sharing man

@DaystromDataConcepts Жыл бұрын

One vital point not mentioned, is that WD, I believe, in their Elements series of larger drives, does something to pin 2, I think, of their SATA rear connector such that it will not function when connected outside its enclosure. If you can mask off pin 2, I believe it solves the problem, but the interface physically doesn't look any different, but will not allow the drive to work as a bare drive without pin masking modifications that many cannot or will not do.

@dubsmachine555 Жыл бұрын

Do they still do this? I shucked 6 WD's in the last 2 years and didn't need to touch the pins on any. I first checked them in my external HD dock via usb to laptop and then slapped them in my NAS and they worked fine.

@DaystromDataConcepts Жыл бұрын

@@dubsmachine555 I cannot comment personally on this. However, there is a video on KZbin from the Bite My Bits channel on this, where higher capacity WD drives had this issue. Not all of them, but it's in the video.

@evilcoleslaw 9 ай бұрын

It's pin 3. It's not really something intended to stop shucking. It's a consequence of them using white label enterprise drives in many of the external drives that support a remote admin feature of the latest SATA spec called PWDIS. Basically, any time pin 3 receives ~2v or more it disables the rest of the drive's circuitry. This allows someone to remotely power cycle the drive if it's done as a pulse. Unfortunately pin 3 is the pin that in older versions of SATA provided 3.3v. (Not many SATA devices used it so they repurposed the pin.) But obviously, most systems will just feed the drive 3.3v power and it keeps the drive in a disabled state. You can get around it either by masking that pin, by using an adapter that doesn't provide 3.3v (molex to SATA power, 5-pin SATA power to 4-pin SATA power) or by literally severing the 3.3v wire and wrapping it up with some electrical tape.

@dubsmachine555 Жыл бұрын

Don't forget that some of these drives are not optimal for 24/7 NAS usage. I shucked some WD drives and they had Ultrastar inside which I am using in my backup NAS, which powers on every few days to take a backup then shuts down on a schedule. Picking those up on Black Friday for half the price of Red Pros or Ironwolf Pros more than outweighs the additional warranty buying NAS drives off the shelf.

@US_Joe Жыл бұрын

Garn darn, Robbie. Awwww shucks ! Gday mate👍👍👍

@nascompares Жыл бұрын

I will always, ALWAYS have time for a pun...

@NNokia-jz6jb Жыл бұрын

TLDR?

@nascompares Жыл бұрын

Shuck, but it's got risks. 'fin

@RobBCactive Жыл бұрын

The explanation was not clear at all, such needs to be unrushed and thought out. BTW I have done it for decades. In recent years I shucked cheap M-SATA SSD cards on sale, putting them in a 2 5" internal disk adapter enclosure to upgrade old out of warranty laptops which had slow laptop HDD system drives. As a UNIX sysadmin in the 90's there was a real temptation to upgrade disks in neat Sun SCSI enclosures with newer drives, they could go from 200MB to a whole GB of faster SCSI disk 😁😆 Those large IBM disks bought new had to be put in an enclosure anyway as they were sold for internal PC 3.5" bays. OTOH I have recently put another 1TB 2.5" HDD laptop drive in a desktop rebuild of used parts, it's intended to back an NVME cache as tiered storage for the forgotten cruft that accumulates under Windows in default folders.

@angellike2234 Жыл бұрын

Interesting, I worked for IBM around the period you allude to before setting up my first company

@RobBCactive Жыл бұрын

@@angellike2234 they were impressive drives, I think later the Deskstars had some trouble. It's hard to believe that 1TB is a small drive now 😁

@abucketofelves Жыл бұрын

So basically you should avoid WD if possible because they're shucking awful.

@willcarter7079 Жыл бұрын

Dang... That's pretty disappointing. I've sucked a dozen 3.5" WD HDD. They have all been normal drives. But that 2.5" drive was completely E-Waste. Sad that WD ruined that drive that way.