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

Is External Drive Shucking Still Worth It?

As long as there have been ready-made USB external hard drives, there has been shucking. Hard Drive Shucking (and in recent years, even SSD shucking) is the process of purchasing an external HDD/SSD enclosure, such as WD My Book or Seagate Backup Plus drive, and then cracking open the casing to get the drive inside. Now, on the face of it, this might seem a bit daft. After all, you can definitely still buy bare/internal HDDs on there own. Why would you go the ‘scenic route’ and purchase a lovely well designed external drive, only to crack the casing open, possibly undermining your warranty, when you can just simply buy the bare drive online and not have to get your hands dirty? Well, the reality of shucking is actually a great deal more nuanced and there are actually several more advantages to HDD/SSD shucking above and beyond the price point! So, today I want to discuss the three reasons why you might want to consider shucking a hard drive or SSD (as well as three reasons why you might want to give it a miss and buy an internal drive at retail). But first, we need to touch on an important point – how is it possible that a hard drive or SSD inside an official enclosure can possibly arrive at a lower price than buying the drive on it’s own?

Note – We made a YouTube video version of this article HERE

How is it possible for an HDD/SSD in a Case to be cheaper than a Bare Drive on its own?

It’s a good question! Logically, an external 10TB HDD USB or Thunderbolt enclosure should NOT cost less than the 10TB drive on its own, right? However, in reality, there are quite a few reasons why they can sometimes be cheaper. Notwithstanding that an external hard drive might be on some kind of special promotional offer (Black Friday, Prime Day, etc), here are a handful of reasons that an external HDD can cost less than the HDD on it’s own:

• HDDs and SSDs that are used in external USB drives are allocated in bulk and, unlike bare HDD/SSDs that are distributed a little more fluidly by both manufacturers and distribution, the brand (WD, Seagate, Toshiba, etc) have to effectively remove a % of the available stock of drives for use in the external enclosures. This means that it removes them from the more dynamic sale/demand price changes that effect fluid bare HDD/SSD stock levels. For example, if you have 5000 x WD Ultrastar 10TBs , and 2500 of them are in enclosures and 2500 of them are sold as bare drives, the 2500 bare drives are going to rise and fall in popularity and are often purchased in bulk by businesses. Whereas the 2500x external HDD enclosures are subject to the demands of external HDDs (which is arguably more predictable and steady, as well as purchased one or two at a time at most)
• External exclosure drives (such as the WD My Book, Passport, Seagate Backup Plus, Toshiba External) are not subject to the same durability requirements that a bare drive might be subject to. This can often be down to the enclosure capping performance to USB 5Gb/s or in a casing that has it’s own throttling/bottleneck out of necessity such as a docking station. This means that a 10TB bard drive and a 10TB inside an enclosure might not ensure the same workload over a 3-5yr period. This results in the brand not needing to use such ensuring drives or even commit to a single HDD in a series of external enclosure in it’s sales lifetime – swapping out the drive as stock levels/procurement allows
• Some external drives use specific OEM drives to meet a price point. OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) drives can often be a completely unique drive that cannot be purchased at retail at all. This can simply be for reasons of portfolio clarity, but can also be because the OEM drive is suitable for external storage but less so for a RAID or as an Operating System drive.

So, thanks to one or more of the above factors, it is actually quite common to find an external USB drive arrive at a lower price point than the same drive that is inside on it’s own. Let’s go through the good and the bad news though.

Reasons You SHOULD Shuck Hard Drives and SSDs

So, let’s start positive! Here are the reasons you should consider shucking a hard drive or SSD, instead of purchasing the bare drive at retail!

Save Money, Free Enclosure and Free Software!

Now, the statement “Shucking HDDs will save you $$$” might seem a bit obvious, but the actual details of the savings AND the gains is often even better than you might think! First up, as detailed above, there is the fact that the HDDs inside the external USB/Thunderbolt enclosures are outside of the sales/demand factors of traditional bare drives, which can mean that you can get a bargain. However, it gets even better. For a start, alot of the more modern HDD/SSD external drive enclosures for 3.5″ HDDs are actually quite high quality and in a more modular design, so you can actually still reuse the SATA enclosure after you have removed the drive. So, not only have you now got your HDD for cheaper than buying it on it’s own, but you also have a free storage enclosure to chuck an older drive into (perhaps one that yu are swapping out for your newer and bigger HDD/SSD). But the gains do not stop there! On top of this, there is the fact that alot of more modern external enclosures are sold with free backup and/or cloud storage software included (many with a free portion of cloud storage too) as the sales focus on external drives have shifted more towards their use as a backup device more than anything. Software such as Acronis, Drive subscriptions, EaseUS, Backupper and Veritas will often be found bundled with your USB/Thunderbolt external drive. So, although the benefits of saving money on HDD or SSD when shucking always takes center stage, it’s worth remembering that the actual value for money and what you end up with can be even better!

Note – 2.5″ HDD/SSD enclosures are often designed in a much more sealed and specific manner, so this can make their re-use after removing the drive inside a slimmer chance, But more on that later…

Rare, OEM only or Hard to Find HDDs Are More Widely Available

This is a factor that is often overlooked, but there are a decent % of quite rare HDDs and SSDs that are ONLY available these days in external drives. Sometimes it is because the drive in question is needed to replace a drive in an old RAID enabled NAS/DAS system and you want to match the existing HDD/SSDs in the array but those drives have been replaced by a newer and possibly unsuitable model. These can often include the oddest capacities, such as 1.5TB, 3TB or 5TB (as well as SSHD Hybrid drives), and this is especially true in the case of 2.5″ drives! This also extents to a number of ht more obscure WD Ultrastar or Seagate EXOS drives that see quite regular refreshes in their portfolios by the brands in question. When this happens, the remaining bare drive stock will more often than not end up in external enclosures, end up either completely removed from sale or end up at painfully small stock availability and increased in price. These price increases rarely affect the external drives though, as WD/Seagate/Toshiba VERY rarely detail the drives they include in the external USB/Thunderbolt drives. Finally, you have specific OEM drives that are not available for purchase anywhere online, but you might want them to replace/upgrade an existing OEM drive in your laptop, tablet or other portable systems. These can include specific-sized 7mm 2.5″ drives or 2260 or 2242 m.2 media that is simply no longer available or never was commercially as a bare drive. If you are looking for a lesser or rare drive, shucking might well be your only option!

Unleash the REAL Performance of the Internal Drive

This is MASSIVELY overlooked and a little more focused on SSDs, but for many/all of the reasons detailed above it is often the case that the SSD inside the USB enclosures that you find in the Sandisk/WD/Seagate/Toshiba ranges are being massively bottlenecked by the external interface of the drive. Now, this isn’t a massive surprise really (at first). An external USB 3.2 Gen 1 drive (so, 5Gb/s or 550MB/s) might have one or two SSDs inside that because of the shared bandwidth up/down of an external rive might well throttle the transfer/IOPS of the drive inside. HOWEVER, where it gets REALLY interesting is in the case of USB 3.2 Gen 2 External drives. In the last few years, we have seen USB change it’s name (sigh, USB 3.0, became USB 3.1, which became USB 3.1 Gen 1, and on and on). but the ones you need to focus on are USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gb/s or 1,000MB/s) and USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gb/s or 2,000MB/s). As fast as these sound, it gets better. As in order for the drive inside to saturate this connection, it needs to use an m.2 NVMe SSD drive. Now, modern PCIe Gen 3 NVMes can comfortably hit 3,000-3,4000MB/s transfer speeds and IOPS in the hundreds of thousands (less so with QLC SSDSs, but they will exceed 2,500MB/s more often than not). Now, SSD manufacturers do not go out of their way to produce capped performance SSDs specifically for external enclosures. Aside from the hassle of intentionally producing lower-speed drives (as well as lower-density NAND + lower-tier controllers), it would just overcomplicate production runs. So, more often than not, the brand will use one of their existing range of NVMes and put them inside the USB 3.2 enclosure. The result is that you will often find much, MUCH more expensive drives (as well as much faster drives) inside these enclosures. One great example is from below from TheSSDReview, where the 1,000MB/s Sandisk Extreme Pro for £89 has a WD Black SN750 $109 3,100MB/s SSD inside! This is ALOT more common than you might think and is often at its worst (or best?) in the USB 3.2 Gen 2 and USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 drives.

Reasons You SHOULD NOT Shuck Hard Drives and SSDs

However, as mentioned, hard drive and SSD shucking NOT for everyone! As good as the above three reasons sound, here are three reasons why you might want to give HDD/SSD shucking a miss!

Warranty & Support will be practically ZERO!

This might sound obvious, but seriously – do NOT rely on or depend on your warranty/support if you shuck an HDD or SSD! All of the storage media manufacturers keep a tight record on the serial numbers of drives that are used for external enclosures and although the bare drive might of had a 3-5yr warranty and the external HDD also had a 3-5yr warranty – removing the drive from that enclosure (often breaking intentionally seals that are put in place by the manufacturer) can more often than not completely END any support they will provide. Even if you manage to shuck an HDD or SSD from an enclosure cleanly, the drive logs and S.M.A.R.T on the drive will likely give you away if you submit the drive for an RMA. Brands provide external drives with support/warranty/guarantees that are specific to that kind of end-use – i.e the warranty/fair-use of an external enclosure does not include cracking it open and using it in a RAID or as an OS drive.

Now, I say that support is ‘practically zero’, because SOMETIMES there is wiggle-room. Eg, you might be able to pursue the replacement/warranty via the e-retailer (eTailer?) that you purchased though, as opposed to going directly to the manufacturer for your RMA/Warranty claim. Now, you might be on slightly shakey moral/legal ground here, as that eShop will still need to conduct the warranty internally with the brand and could easily hold off on a replacement/refund until the brand confirms it’s eligibility, but nevertheless, that does still mean that there is still a sliver of a chance – though it’s hardly concrete!

Soldered and Fixed Interfaces by Manufacturers

Now one area in which brands have tried to stamp out HDD/SSD shucking (as it can often result in a loss of revenue – those poor, poor multi-billion dollar companies…) is adapting the drive inside the USB external drive enclosure to ONLY be usable inside this casing. Despite drive media changing exponentially in the last 2-3 decades, most internal drive media can be broken down now to just three popular interfaces – SATA, NVMe and mSATA.There are others (eg SAS, U.2, etc), but there are rarely used in external drives that you will consider for shucking. However, despite the drive inside a WD My Book, My Passport or Toshiba Canvio being nearly identical to a regular barebone internal drive, it MIGHT arrive with it’s interface partially or FULLY replaced by a SATA-to-USB bridge board that is soldered to the drive itself. Sometimes, this bridge is just clipped on and/or screwed ot the drive and can be removed. However, sometimes (as seen in the example below with a WD My Passport from 2019), the interface a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-B Micro drive will specifically replace the usual SATA interface! Be aware! 

Internal HDDs and SSD Choices are Subject to Change

More often than not, THIS is the reason that HDD and SSD shucking of external drives has never been especially dependable as a long-term solution. The hard drives or solid-state drives that the store media brands allocate to their external drive ranges are subject to change! Now, because media brands rarely publically disclose the HDD/SSD inside the enclosure in data sheets (seriously, I have only seem them highlight the drive inside once in 20 years of my career), it means you are hugely dependent of public forums, reviews and benchmarking tools by 3rd parties (eg review sites, Reddit, even Facebook groups) to share which drives are inside external USB drives. Understandably, most consumers are hesitant to crack open an external drive to share the knowledge of a drive inside, potentially invalidating their warranty. HDD and SSD review sites will often make a point of opening up an external drive when reviewing or using tools such as CrystalDiskMark to access the drive and show the drive model ID inside, which is good.

However, because the likes of WD, Seagate and Toshiba can swap allocated drives at production at any time (based on demand and availability), the information detailed online of the contents of an external USB/Thunderbolt enclosure has the potential to be invalid/outdated as time passes – and that isn’t factoring in the potential that those same SSD media manufacturers use more than one drive in a series at once. They just need to use a drive that fits the external drive use case scenario, which as we have detailed above, is much less potent than many bare drives. A 2022 review might well say that the drive inside your WD My Book is an Ultrastar HC310 or WD Black 10TB, but buying it in 2023 might end up with you buying a plain, bog standard WD Blue 10TB. Buyer Beware!

How to Check Which Drive is Inside a USB/Thunderbolt External Enclosure WithoutOpning It?

If you have purchased an external drive (e.g WD My Book, WD My Passport, Sandisk Extreme, Toshiba Canvio or Seagate Backup Plus) and want to check which HDD/SSD is inside WITHOUT physically opening the case (so you have the open to send back immediately if it’s unsuitable), I strongly recommend using the tool CrystalDiskInfo, which can be found HERE. Although there are different tools in the CrystalDisk toolkit, the Info tool is the one you want! In most cases, you will not even need to initialize the drive formally (eg create a usable volume with ‘Disk Management > Select Drive > Create Volume > Drive Letter > Format > etc), as it should appear as an available drive regardless, even over USB.Just ensure that 1) you have the drive connected before you run the CrystalDiskInfo application and 2) That the external drive is connected when booting the system (not ecessential, but can make a difference on some drives depending on the interface in question).

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How To Choose The BEST Value Hard Drive And Best Price Per TB – Get It Right, FIRST TIME!

Below you will find our automatic hard drive price per TB/GB tool, designed to crawl many, MANY different eShops and divide their cost between the available storage. This allows us to rank/list these drives by the largest amount of terabytes youwill get for your money. This list includes popular hard drive manufacturers, such as Seagate, WD and Toshiba, allowing you to ensure that you are getting excellent value for money on your storage, as well as only choosing the most reputable HDD makers in the world. Before you head down there though, take a moment to quick familiarize yourself with a few key factors that will aid you in understanding how to understand what separates one HDD from another.

Click Below to Use the Best Price per TB Chart (Updated Daily)

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