I am looking for an internal 4TB harddisk and found external USB harddisk is even cheaper, it is only $99.
https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/seagate-4t…
Can I remove the it from its case and use as internal harddisk?
Can I Take Seagate 4TB Hard Disk out from Expansion Desktop Case
Lkingbargain999 on 29/05/2021 - 01:16
Comments
Long answer is:
The internal drive is just a standard Barracuda 4TB with a USB controller attached to the SATA connection. Pull apart the external housing, disconnect the USB controller (and perhaps keep if you ever change your mind) and plug and play as per any other drive.
I have heard of manufacturers trying to stop people doing this through various methods so YMMV.
Are these SMR? Would that make a difference if used just in a PC?
Nah it's fine. I wouldn't put anything too important on it or have adequate backups
The police will come and arrest you
I just did the same last night. 5 min job. Take off the outer shell (use knife chisel takes 2min). Take the drive out of the box, unscrew the power/USB attachment (inc the sticky foil) and you have a sea gate barracuda pro ssd hard drive. Attach it into your pc and voila. Cheaper than trying to buy an internal drive
Great! I will get one today! BTW, what is the rpm of the harddisk?
Not an SSD* its a HDD
Nope, you won’t find a Barracuda Pro or an SSD or any combination of those in the case.
You will find a Barracuda Compute, their bottom of the rung consumer SMR drive.
Can I remove the it from its case and use as internal harddisk?
You can, but be aware you void/give up any warranty on the product once you bust it open.
Also some drives don't have standard SATA connectors to stop you using them in a PC etc. I've seen this more so on 2.5" units than 3.5" units.
So for a $20 saving, is giving up warranty worth it?
Oh, I forgot about the warranty. Thanks for reminding me.
It's SMR. If you are doing mass backups weekly, you'll also have to factor in the extra time your computer is required to be online.
My opinion on these drives is that they are not very environmentally friendly at all, as you cannot add and remove them safely from USB until it's finished writing all data.
At 50-100w per hour used for most computers, it can be very costly at 25c per kwh. Suppose it takes an extra 10 hours to write the files, that's an extra 25c a week you are spending on electricity. After 2 years you have lost money by buying a SMR drive. Not to mention, if you are doing RAID or storage spaces, you will have issues as well.
What do you mean by that? How is SMR different wrt finishing writing the data?
Shuck away!