Why Are 6TB Internal Hard Drives More Expensive Than 6TB External Hard Drives? (Page 1/5)
Boondawg DEC 05, 05:34 PM
I mean, the externals have the added cost of the enclosure & power supply, right?
But inside, isn't it the same hard drive?
And with the internal, it requires quite a bit more work to get it up & running.

Is it that the internal is a more "bulletproof", longer lifespan, etc. hard drive?
Because the external seems to be incredibly portable/convenient.
Shouldn't convenience/dummy proof cost more?

Why isn't the internal cheaper?
Jake_Dragon DEC 05, 07:14 PM
Well a lot of times you don't know what brand or type hard drive is in the external enclosure.
That said I had a 8 TB external drive and when it stopped working I took it apart (it was huge) and it had 4 hard drives and used some kind of striping to make it the full usable size.
I removed the drives and repurposed them in several PCs and they worked fine. They were not as fast as the internal drives but they were large disks.
I suspect that the board died due to heat.

Edit
Also some external drives have boards that disable the ability to install them as internals. I have also ran into that. They all have the same drive ID and are not recognized by the PC. This could also explain the price difference.

[This message has been edited by Jake_Dragon (edited 12-05-2018).]

theogre DEC 05, 08:39 PM

quote
Originally posted by Boondawg:

I mean, the externals have the added cost of the enclosure & power supply, right?
But inside, isn't it the same hard drive?
And with the internal, it requires quite a bit more work to get it up & running.

Is it that the internal is a more "bulletproof", longer lifespan, etc. hard drive?
Because the external seems to be incredibly portable/convenient.
Shouldn't convenience/dummy proof cost more?

Why isn't the internal cheaper?

Often no to many point here.
May look same inside external drives but often have different speeds and electronics.
Even 2.5" drives are different in external units. Many have boards directly plug into USB 2 or 3 so don't need a board to put SATA Drive on USB. They made far less of these vs laptop internal units and that can affect drive price even before adding just a case. Most small USB haven't had PSU in years because USB 2 and 3 provides enough power.

internal drives have many features as external units too like parking the heads on ramps off the disk(s) completely, not on the disk(s) as old drives did.

Internal drives have different Warranties that affect the price.
Example: WD Blue is cheaper then WD Black or Red partly for this reason. Blue drives often have less cache, slower spin speed, slower head access time and not programed to work in NAS/Servers w/ RAID. Basically, Blue is cheap for most consumer systems. Black is for "prosumer" types needs higher performance and NAS uses. Red is Enterprise level for Business Servers etc. Red drives are made to spin at full power (often spin @ 10,000+ RPM) 24/7/365 for many years unlike most Blue and Black drives will park and shut down to save power to meet EPA Energy Star etc. (Is/was WD Green w/ slower spin speed to save even more power. Green 3.5" spin at 5400rpm or less.)

------------------
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
(Jurassic Park)

The Ogre's Fiero Cave

[This message has been edited by theogre (edited 12-05-2018).]

Boondawg DEC 05, 08:45 PM

quote
Originally posted by theogre:
Often no to many point here.
May look same inside external drives but often have different speeds and electronics.
Even 2.5" drives are different in external units. Many have boards directly plug into USB 2 or 3 so don't need a board to put SATA Drive on USB. They made far less of these vs laptop internal units and that can affect drive price even before adding just a case. Most small USB haven't had PSU in years because USB 2 and 3 provides enough power.

internal drives have many features as external units too like parking the heads on ramps off the disk(s) completely, not on the disk(s) as old drives did.

Internal drives have different Warranties that affect the price.
Example: WD Blue is cheaper then WD Black or Red partly for this reason. Blue drives often have less cache, slower spin speed, slower head access time and not programed to work in NAS/Servers w/ RAID. Basically, Blue is cheap for most consumer systems. Black is for "prosumer" types needs higher performance and NAS uses. Red is Enterprise level for Business Servers etc. Red drives are made to spin at full power 24/7/365 for many years unlike most Blue and Black drives will park and shut down to save power to meet EPA Energy Star etc. (Is/was WD Green w/ slower spin speed to save even more power. Green 3.5" spin at 5400rpm or less.)




Man, I was so hoping you would respond!
Have appreciated your insight for years!

Thanx!

[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 12-05-2018).]

Boondawg DEC 05, 09:33 PM
I see "Surveillance", "Storage", "Enterprise", etc., drives.
I want to store movies indefinitely, and view occasionally.
Do you have a recommendation for what is best for long-term storage with occasional viewing?
theogre DEC 06, 12:24 PM
WD Green and others will do that...
Green drives are good for second drives for most users because doesn't eat much power or make heat even at full speed. Even then Most of time most "data drives" on a PC goes to sleep and stay off and only the "C" drive stays on most of time. Even C drive often go to sleep when not use the PC even if PC never sleeps etc. (I have 5 drives in the PC and 4 are sleeping most of time.)

Playing movies music and other things doesn't need a fast spin drive.
Even movies on DVD and Bluray, the player spins slow watching the movie vs high speed to use the menu or access data on it in a PC.

Don't bother using SSD. Movies Music and even Pictures can fill any disk you have and doesn't need high speed to play/view. Even old drives w/ old SATA 1 and 2 are fast enough to store those. (Newer cameras easily eat 5MB and more per pic depending on camera settings.) Heck... Most Old "IDE" (PATA) drives are fast enough but new MoBo don't have ports to run them.

If you what permanent storage. Need a backup plan or two... Most HD last for years, many even decades, but any HD or SSD can fail in the blink of a eye.
I have a simple NAS w/ 1 drive (Example: WD's "My Cloud" drives) and USB3 unit to make two copies of important data.
Most USB3 drives work work on USB2 ports but slow down because of power and data speed.
I don't bother using software to auto backup everything. I just have copies for My Doc's etc and even then don't backup crap that won't use again.

Note that All PC hardware likes cooling Not just the CPU and others w/ heat sinks. What to kill a disk? Then run them over 120°F. Even higher the disk will work but often have a very short life.
Every internal disk has SMART and report Drive Temp. Access temp report thru many tools like free hwmonitor. Most External Drive may have SMART too but maybe hidden by hardware etc so may not show in monitor software. (Try plugging in external units before running monitors.)
In my PC have front fans and 1 blows thru the HD bays... I never see above 110°F on a drive. Right now Max is 90° but room is 60's°F

[This message has been edited by theogre (edited 12-06-2018).]

TheDigitalAlchemist DEC 07, 09:11 AM
I have used many different things over the years, but the “best” experience I have had is our current network storage solution- the Drobo.

Just put drives in, turn it on, install the software, let it update its firmware, create a few shares, assign permissions, Toss data onto it, and rest easy. It’s great for those who don’t know how to set up a raid or are tired of one part failing or not working as it should with the other hardware. Or their controller board dies due to heat issues.

I’ve dealt with several different companies’ NAS, and almost all of them had one major issue or another- the main one is that each would work great until it hit the wall- “oops, you can only have 2000 directories “ or the permissions would get screwed up, or the shares would “go away”, the device would drop off the network, or other seriously annoying issues.

The Drobo has been solid, the others I have used at various jobs have been solid for years. There was one low-end model which I believe had issues, not sure.

I’m tremendously happy with it- the WD offerings have been HUGE dissapointments, just awful. “Want to bring them to a field with a baseball bat office space” awful. the other ones were so bad, I don’t even remember their names at this point.

I’m sure they are issues with Drobo , but I have yet to experience them.

The dashboard’s great.

(Hope I never re-visit this thread with a “OMG, Drobo is “the suck”! “ update!)
Boondawg DEC 07, 11:47 AM

quote
Originally posted by TheDigitalAlchemist:

I have used many different things over the years, but the “best” experience I have had is our current network storage solution- the Drobo.






Man, how I want one!
This really is the way to go!

Old drives (I have a closet full of old archived keepers) can be plugged in with the new drives.
It spreads it across the newer drives in the enclosure, so when that old drive fails, you still have the original image for retrieval.
Lots of benefits to this setup!

Can I afford it?
Nope.

But worth every dang penny in my opinion!
theogre DEC 07, 02:55 PM
Just grab first example above.
I have an older WD My Book NAS and no problems. I never bothered w/ streaming from it much but seems to work ok w/ factory install streaming.

Most times my NAS in on w/ drive asleep and be that for years now. Might wake up 1 - 2 times a month.

Many times all Windows PC have issues w/ net shares except from full Win Servers.
Like many would share a drive etc from any version Windows then let share machine go to sleep and never get a clue why share cause problems on other machines or worse have Word and others open and loose data because share machine is asleep or off.

Plus Most NAS Printers etc have DHCP and many problems for it. DHCP w/o Revering the IP then Servers Printer and everything else can get a new address w/o warning and all Windows PC often barfs on that. Most SoHo routers have a way to use DHCP Reservation but every router has it's own Admin interface so hard to say how to do in general terms.
Nice thing w/ DHCP Reservation is you don't need a static IP setup in each net printer etc.

What? Why?
Nutshell version...
Mainly because Most Devices have Host Names but you don't have local way to manage that... IOW No Local DNS (or even WINs) on HoSo nets because Most, if not All, SoHo routers just passes DNS from you ISP and don't add local machines.
Many devices have UPnP on the local net but often doesn't work. Many Admins have UPnP disabled on everything they can because often doesn't work and big security problem too.
So Windows and others have a hard time match Host Names to IP locally and if a device changes IP for any reason, many clients won't look and just flip an error.
williegoat DEC 07, 04:39 PM
Have some fun and learn along the way! Build your own file server using Linux, RAID, DNSmasq and Samba.

Then, one day you will look back and say, "Why do I even need Windoze?"

[This message has been edited by williegoat (edited 12-07-2018).]