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A comment on Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”. Parent comment

Re:Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM” by gruez on Monday September 07, 2020 @09:49PM (#24404529)
Why not get an external hard drive and shuck it? You end up paying half the price, but the drive is still the same (although you have to pay attention to reviews on /r/DataHoarder). The only disadvantage is the lack of warranty and having to shuck it.
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Re:Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM” by yumraj on Monday September 07, 2020 @10:52PM (#24404820)
After a lot of deliberation I finally decided to shuck and got 2 8tb WD elements from Amazon and 2 8tb WD easystore from Best Buy. Shucking was extremely easy. They all had the same WD white drive inside.

However, the difference was not in just branding which to me was surprising. In Elements the drive is held by rubber brackets which won’t fit in non-WD drives, but Easystore is using rubberized screws, which allowed me to use the case with older Seagates.

They do run hot in the external case. I was trying to run badblocks and when the temp became about 60C, I decided to run an external fan. I wonder how long do these drives last in these external cases.. In my NAS with fans, the highest it got was 49C

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Re:Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM” by bleepblorp on Tuesday September 08, 2020 @12:24AM (#24405194)
Shucking isn't necessarily possible anymore.

Some WD external drives will hang the boot process if the host computer probes the drive for bootability. These drives will even stop the host computer from booting if they're connected via USB, much less if they're directly connected.

Some USB external drives have the USB controller embedded on the drive PCB and don't provide an accessible SATA interface.

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Re:Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM” by throwme45353464 on Tuesday September 08, 2020 @08:25AM (#24407702)
Emphasis on _some_. This type of behaviour is more common on the compact 2.5" type external drives.

As of writing this comment, big external drives still come with 3.5" hard drives, with the only caveat being that some require you to disable the 3.3V rail on your SATA connector, either by cutting the wire or taping some pins on your HDD with kapton tape. Without the workaround some of these shucked drives will not power up properly when connected to a SATA power plug that also provides 3.3V.

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