External Hard Drives cheaper than Internal Hard Drives?

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Former member 61586

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So busy shopping for an internal SATA3-3TB internal hard drive. Local prices from a few PC stores quote prices of about +-R1650. Online gives me a +-R100 saving, but I don't really want to ship a hard drive as the risk in my opinion for damage may be higher in transit.

Then came accross this... http://www.makro.co.za/p/39052/seagate-3tb-hard-drive-plus-avg-internet-security-2013/

Couldn't I just buy this and remove the hard drive from within and stick in the PC? Some online research reveals it has a SATA3-3TB hard drive installed.
 
yes you can , you just need to read a guide how to open the the enclosure without damaging it , so if your drive fails you can put it back and go get a refund.
 
^^ Sneaky but great idea, now days not much difference between external and internal drives. Makes sense..
 
Yes you can.

However, there are a few risks involved. The worst is damaging the actual drive, and secondly making the warranty null. The other problem that sometime arises with these external drives, is getting that HDD to function in NTFS (for installing Windows). Quite a few drives use the controller in the enclosure and it sometimes causes the drive to only be formatted in exFAT (which you can't install Windows onto). But, if you're only going to use the drive for storage, then that won't be a problem.
 
EmileS said:
Yes you can.

However, there are a few risks involved. The worst is damaging the actual drive, and secondly making the warranty null. The other problem that sometime arises with these external drives, is getting that HDD to function in NTFS (for installing Windows). Quite a few drives use the controller in the enclosure and it sometimes causes the drive to only be formatted in exFAT (which you can't install Windows onto). But, if you're only going to use the drive for storage, then that won't be a problem.
Click to expand...

I have never ever ancountered an external that could only be formatted exfat. In fact I have never had a drive come with exFat on it at all.
 
EmileS said:
Yes you can.

However, there are a few risks involved. The worst is damaging the actual drive, and secondly making the warranty null. The other problem that sometime arises with these external drives, is getting that HDD to function in NTFS (for installing Windows). Quite a few drives use the controller in the enclosure and it sometimes causes the drive to only be formatted in exFAT (which you can't install Windows onto). But, if you're only going to use the drive for storage, then that won't be a problem.
Click to expand...

exFAT? Really?

OP- just consider that many USB HDD's now have the USB port directly soldered onto the SATA PCB to form a proprietary connector:

1.jpg

Meaning that even if you disassemble it, it would not work as a SATA drive.
 
External 3.5" drives which come with external power supply are still standard SATA.

Lower price for external hard drives is due to marketting tactics. They try to delay price drop for hard drives. It indicate that at current prices supply exceeds demand. They push redundant stock through this channel while keeping high prices in the high volume channel.
 
The only time you need to worry about a USB PCB is with 2.5" externals. 3.5" externals will all still be SATA.

The 'controller in the enclosure' will have nothing to do with the format of the drive, it's merely a SATA-USB bridge board, sometimes with encryption. Removing the 3.5" HDD from an external enclosure will give you a normal drive, you can format it to whatever FS you want.
 
Those Seagate externals have standard off the shelf Seagate 'internal' hard drives inside with a removable connector board. I got 2 3TB drives from Game a few months back for R1099ea and recently got 2 2TB drives from Hi-Fi Corp for R899ea.
The drives inside the enclosures are ST2000DM001 (2GB) & ST3000DM001 (3GB) which are the same models you would buy from any PC Store as an internal drive at a higher price. The only tricky part is opening the enclosure without breaking any of the clips. Hav'nt broken any so far...

I opened a 1 GB Verbatim external USB powered drive and it also has a standard SATA port with removable board. Standard MQ01ABD100 Toshiba Laptop drive inside. Stick with Segate... least you know what brand drive is inside.
 
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I bought an external 500gb 2.5'' from Makro as it was cheaper than buying just the drive.

If you open it, you void the warranty, but who cares.
 
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