WDC My Book vs Bare Drive

[BarkingGhostar]

So, I went looking for some WDC 4TB drives. I was on one site and the bare 3.5" Green drive was actually more expensive than the My Book product, which in my experience contains Green drives. The difference in price was not trivial (50% more for bare).

Am I missing something?

 

[Cerb]

Either they have no problems selling the bare drive at a premium, and so they do; or they really need to move those external units. The internal/external prices go up and down all of the time, relative to each other (usually not by 50%, though).

 

[Elixer]

Lots of times the external drives are cheaper than the internal units.
I would have assumed that wouldn't be the case, but, for whatever reason, it is.

 

[LoveMachine]

I'm on my second MyBook (a new 4TB model that's about 4 months old, no problems so far). The first 2TB one had the notoriously bad green drive, but the enclosure controller died after 6 months. I harvested the EARS (or whatever that model was) drive out of it and it kept going for another year or so, then died as so many of those did. Long story short, it's the same drive as the bare units, but wrapped in crappy enclosure. If it's cheaper, get the MyBook.

 

[Phynaz]

Not missing a thing. The retail external drive market is larger than the retail internal drive market. More volume = more competition = lower prices.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Well, I went ahead and ordered a couple of the external 4TB units. A friend tried to steer me toward Seagate 5TB for $110 on Costco's website, but Seagate is not to be trusted from my personal (bad) experience.