WD My Book 4tb cheaper than bare drive...

KLC

Senior member
Jun 30, 2007
258
2
81
The WD My Book external drive is $115 at Amazon, the WD 4tb green bare drive is $130. Is there any reason why I shouldn't buy the external, disassemble it and save 15 dollars?
 

jkauff

Senior member
Oct 4, 2012
583
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81
My Books are USB 3.0 drives. Better make sure the bare drive has a regular SATA interface.
 

shabby

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,782
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91
Seems like warranty is identical for both drives, i'd go with the external, plus you get an external enclosure if you even need it.
 

master_shake_

Diamond Member
May 22, 2012
6,425
291
121
i bought one of those enclosures it (the drive) has a regular sata interface but it's a green drive.

the usb enclosure has some kind of encryption built in to it so if the enclosure dies your data is gone.

it's not that bad to shell either.
 

KentState

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2001
8,397
393
126
The WD My Book external drive is $115 at Amazon, the WD 4tb green bare drive is $130. Is there any reason why I shouldn't buy the external, disassemble it and save 15 dollars?

What is the warranty like if you disassemble the case and use the drive? That's the route I took with the 2TB drive for my PS4, but the case had to be tore up to get the drive out.
 

KLC

Senior member
Jun 30, 2007
258
2
81
I have a collection of older drives and a few WD My Book external drives, but they are all 2tb or less and I'm approaching 2tb of files I need to store. I'm thinking about getting a new 4tb drive to consolidate everything, then I'll use the older drives to archive things that I don't need to access everyday. In order to save space and simplify I'm thinking about getting this HD dock (anyone have a comment about this one or about docks in general?):

http://www.amazon.com/Anker®-Extern...8-2&keywords=anker+hard+drive+docking+station

So I really just need a bare 4tb drive. My assumption is that a My Book external drive has a standard WD hard drive, why would they create a whole new product just to put inside an external enclosure? If I reformat it shouldn't it be just like any other WD HD? There are probably warranty issues but I'm not too concerned about that. I'm not sure about my assumptions so I thought I'd ask.
 

Erithan13

Senior member
Oct 25, 2015
218
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I don't know how much truth is in this, but I've heard that the external drives are cheaper because they're from the bottom end of what's acceptable in terms of quality assurance at the manufacturer. They're likely trading off the lower expected reliability with the fact external drives generally don't see as much use as bare internal drives.
 

Charlie98

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2011
6,292
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I'm going to guess that as soon as you pop that drive out of the enclosure, the warranty is done.

I accidentally bought a 2TB external drive... ran it for a bit. It seemed to run quite hot so I just pulled it out of the enclosure and mounted it internally... where it ran much cooler... with the understanding that the warranty was rendered moot at that point. I lucked out, the enclosure contained a straight-up Seagate Barracuda (7200rpm) drive, but I'll bet WD uses Greens.

I haven't looked at them in a while, but I recall portable drives had less warranty than their internal counterparts... but they have butchered most internal drive warranties down, anyway, so they may be the same now.

So I really just need a bare 4tb drive. My assumption is that a My Book external drive has a standard WD hard drive, why would they create a whole new product just to put inside an external enclosure? If I reformat it shouldn't it be just like any other WD HD?

Should be... however, you spend the money on an external... pop it open and find it's not correct or what you want... and you are stuck with it in any event because you voided the warranty by opening the enclosure. Chances are, with full size external (3.5") drives, you are getting a standard SATA interface drive.
 

stlc8tr

Golden Member
Jan 5, 2011
1,106
4
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Dunno if WD does the same thing but Seagate external drives had APM set so it parks more often than a "true" internal drive.

You can set APM to a different value using some freeware tools. I had a link to a SPCR thread somewhere around here.