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Is this a good drive for the price:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178111&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL030614&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL030614-_-EMC-030614-Index-_-ExternalHardDrives-_-22178111-L0C

How easy to take it out of the enclosure?

 

Or should I stick with that one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178393&ignorebbr=1

 

Or any other recommendation for a 4TB drive?

 

Thanks

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Is this a good drive for the price:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178111&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL030614&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL030614-_-EMC-030614-Index-_-ExternalHardDrives-_-22178111-L0C

How easy to take it out of the enclosure?

 

Or should I stick with that one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178393&ignorebbr=1

 

Or any other recommendation for a 4TB drive?

 

Thanks

 

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of using the drive from an external box. You open yourself up to potential warranty issues. The only reason I would consider it, was if the price was ridiculously good...

 

Here's a couple of US deals I came across using google shopping:

 

https://www.google.com/shopping/product/10294601876416739801?hl=en&q=4tb+4+tb&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.62577051,d.aWM,pv.xjs.s.en_US.V_LfeUcmUN4.O&biw=1280&bih=798&tch=1&ech=1ψ=G5wYU7fIAcvpqAH05oG4DA.1394121755320.21&sa=X&ei=hpwYU4X0B4a8qwHm1oDYBw&ved=0CKgDEPMCMBE

 

https://www.google.com/shopping/product/10626947729579812806?q=4tb%204%20tb&hl=en&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.62577051,d.aWM,pv.xjs.s.en_US.V_LfeUcmUN4.O&biw=1280&bih=798&tch=1&ech=1ψ=G5wYU7fIAcvpqAH05oG4DA.1394121755320.27&sa=X&ei=sZwYU6zPCorJqQH0zoGgBQ&ved=0CNMBEPMCMAc4PA&prds=scoring:tp

 

As I've never purchased from any of those retailers, I can't recommend anything other than the product and the price, but if you buy from a retailer that gets reasonable reviews, you should probably be ok.

 

I am a fan of Hitachi drives, but they are by no means the be all end all, so to speak. They just happened to be the best priced 4TB drives I came across...

 

As far as the NAS vs regular drive... I've been using 'regular' drives for years in my always-on UnRaid box, and had minimal failures over the years. Definitely not convinced that you need to use a NAS drive...

 

I would say the more important thing to keep an eye on is the warranty. A lot of drives have dropped to 1 year instead of 3+, so if possible, try and stick with the longer warrantied drives...

 

HTH!

 

DB

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"Shucking" external drives is very common when trying for the best $/TB purchases. The drive inside is not the same as the NAS drive linked for a bit more. The firmware and warranty are different. You get a better drive by paying more. The version of the external linked is the older model, which can be built using different drives (DX or DM). So, it is a bit of a low price grab bag. $37.25 vs $47.25 is a big difference if you are buy many TB.

 

If you shuck a drive, expect no warranty.

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$140 shipped with the promo code - good price. Not excellent (I've seen $125), but good.

How easy to take it out of the enclosure?

Easy.

1. Pull the bottom part (where all the electronics is) straight down, easy by hand, it will come off.

2. Using two flat screwdrivers (or anything flat, thin, and strong enough) separate the right and the left sides of the case. Find the thin split and use brute force. Drat, I've done this 8 times and still could not confidently remember which side is just a cover, and which is the case proper...  :-[  I believe the right side (looking at the case from back) is "cover".

3. The rest is obvious.

 

Funny thing is this particular enclosure, despite the terrible cracking sounds it makes during disassembling, does not actually break and can be perfectly put back together. And the bottom part can be perfectly used (after cutting off the black plastic "rods") to attach, for example, a "naked" internal SATA DVD-drive via USB to a PC.

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I shouldn't say this, as it'll probably jinx my next drive order [ :) ], but since Newegg switched to their "hard bubble pack" for shipping hard drives, I've not had a single DOA drive  :)    It's a MAJOR improvement from their "wrap 'em and boss 'em in the box" process of not-so-long-ago.

 

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I shouldn't say this, as it'll probably jinx my next drive order [ :) ], but since Newegg switched to their "hard bubble pack" for shipping hard drives, I've not had a single DOA drive  :)    It's a MAJOR improvement from their "wrap 'em and boss 'em in the box" process of not-so-long-ago.

I took advantage of one of their recent discounts on a 3TB WD Red and was a little apprehensive due to some of the recent comments. When it arrived it was in the best hard drive packaging I have ever seen. It was practically a case. Large, firm bubbles with a "lid" of bubbles on one end that allowed it to be easily opened and even re-used. It finished preclearing yesterday with no problems. I will wait until the ice melts before I use it to upgrade one of my 2TB drives. Even though I have an UPS I don't want to risk an extended power failure in the middle of a rebuild.
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I shouldn't say this, as it'll probably jinx my next drive order [ :) ], but since Newegg switched to their "hard bubble pack" for shipping hard drives, I've not had a single DOA drive  :)    It's a MAJOR improvement from their "wrap 'em and boss 'em in the box" process of not-so-long-ago.

I took advantage of one of their recent discounts on a 3TB WD Red and was a little apprehensive due to some of the recent comments. When it arrived it was in the best hard drive packaging I have ever seen. It was practically a case. Large, firm bubbles with a "lid" of bubbles on one end that allowed it to be easily opened and even re-used. It finished preclearing yesterday with no problems. I will wait until the ice melts before I use it to upgrade one of my 2TB drives. Even though I have an UPS I don't want to risk an extended power failure in the middle of a rebuild.

Must have only ordered one drive.  Try ordering more then one.  They (Newegg in TN) put the drives for my RMA'd drives in those containers but the box they then put them in was big enough to fit at least 8 drives.  The packaging outside of those bubble wrap sleeve containers was a VERY large single bubble packing material that was easily popped. This then left the drives to bounce around the box and into each other with enough force to pop the bubbles of the sleeve wrapping the drives. Once that happened it left the drives with no protection at all. This happened to me on an RMA'd set of 2 4TB WD Red drives from my black friday order that had 3 out of 5 drives bad.  Then they (Newegg) wouldn't take back the bad RMA'd drive because it was past the original order date + (30 or 90 days they allow) so I had to send to WD directly.  Luckily it was a new drive and not refurbished from them and was packaged with the black plastic shells that are form fitted over the ends of the drive and fill the box.  Now Amazon sent me two drives in those BOXES that were then packed inside another box that itself had adequate packing material. The box was sized to correctly fit the two boxes with a 1-2 inch space with bubble packing material to fill the space.  When I ordered a single drive from Newegg the box was sized to exactly fit their bubble wrap sleeve so only one bubble was popped when the third drive came to me on my black friday RMA.  That drive tested good.  So I will only order one drive at a time from Newegg since they can't seem to use a correctly sized box for multiple drives.
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That's not a bad idea (one drive at a time).    The worst box I've ever received (I posted a picture of it here some time ago) was in fact one with a lot of hard drives in it (8 or 9) => and that was before they'd started using the nicely form-fitted drive shipment containers, so the drives were really bashed around.  I had to RMA 4 of them ... although Newegg gave me absolutely no hassle about that when I sent them a picture of how their shipment arrived  :)

[in fact, they overnighted me some replacements in advance of the return ... and paid for the return.]

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been 'shucking' drives for years, almost always Seagates bought from the local PC World when they're on sale.  I'm running a pair of Desktop.15 4TB drives which came out of external boxes.  They're been perfect.  I still have a 1TB drive I shucked.  I saved enough over the years that if one dies, I can afford to bin it and just buy another drive, no warranty required.

 

I paid £89 for the two 4TB drives about 3 months ago...plus I got two 12v PSUs which are handy little items to have about when you're a tinkerer like me. :)

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Yeah, I have always purchased the lowest $/GB drives for unRAID, which are often externals, as BackBlaze documents pretty well. I do try and pre-test the drives prior to shucking.

 

 

With the USB 3.0 interfaces on most externals you can preclear disks at full speed now. I run any externals I'm going to strip from the enclosure through 4 preclear cycles while still in the enclosure. If it can handle 5 days straight of reads and writes while in those hot, tightly packed enclosures with no airflow then you can pretty much count on the disk not having any issues going forward.

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If you look at the way external drives are packaged, they're far more protected in my option.  I'd rather buy a drive that left China with rubber buffers inside a plastic box, inside a cardboard box, which it stays in until I open it.  Bare drives can be mishandled at various points along the way (I used to work in the IT distribution sector, and I've seen a pallet of bare hard-drives falling from racking on to a concrete floor - they were gathered up and sold on as usual).

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Helldiveruk I'm also in the UK and compared to our American friends we get bent over on the price for hard disks. So we're did you get 4tb drives for 85quid!? I want in on that club!

 

As I said above, I got the Seagate Expansions 4TB external drives for £89.99 from PCWorld.  They're on sale quite often, you just have to keep an eye on their web site.  If you click'n'collect by clicking through Quidco, it works out at £85 after the cashback.  Then I just rip the drive out of the case, job jobbed.

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I shouldn't say this, as it'll probably jinx my next drive order [ :) ], but since Newegg switched to their "hard bubble pack" for shipping hard drives, I've not had a single DOA drive  :)    It's a MAJOR improvement from their "wrap 'em and boss 'em in the box" process of not-so-long-ago.

I took advantage of one of their recent discounts on a 3TB WD Red and was a little apprehensive due to some of the recent comments. When it arrived it was in the best hard drive packaging I have ever seen. It was practically a case. Large, firm bubbles with a "lid" of bubbles on one end that allowed it to be easily opened and even re-used. It finished preclearing yesterday with no problems. I will wait until the ice melts before I use it to upgrade one of my 2TB drives. Even though I have an UPS I don't want to risk an extended power failure in the middle of a rebuild.

Must have only ordered one drive.  Try ordering more then one.  They (Newegg in TN) put the drives for my RMA'd drives in those containers but the box they then put them in was big enough to fit at least 8 drives.  The packaging outside of those bubble wrap sleeve containers was a VERY large single bubble packing material that was easily popped. This then left the drives to bounce around the box and into each other with enough force to pop the bubbles of the sleeve wrapping the drives. Once that happened it left the drives with no protection at all. This happened to me on an RMA'd set of 2 4TB WD Red drives from my black friday order that had 3 out of 5 drives bad.  Then they (Newegg) wouldn't take back the bad RMA'd drive because it was past the original order date + (30 or 90 days they allow) so I had to send to WD directly.  Luckily it was a new drive and not refurbished from them and was packaged with the black plastic shells that are form fitted over the ends of the drive and fill the box.  Now Amazon sent me two drives in those BOXES that were then packed inside another box that itself had adequate packing material. The box was sized to correctly fit the two boxes with a 1-2 inch space with bubble packing material to fill the space.  When I ordered a single drive from Newegg the box was sized to exactly fit their bubble wrap sleeve so only one bubble was popped when the third drive came to me on my black friday RMA.  That drive tested good.  So I will only order one drive at a time from Newegg since they can't seem to use a correctly sized box for multiple drives.

I just got a shipment of 3 3TB Reds from Newegg TN and I will have to say they fixed their packaging problems I've had on previous shipments.  I can now recommend them as long as they keep packaging drives in correctly sized boxes with adequate packaging.  The single shipment boxes around the bubble drive sleeves was an added bonus. Correctly sized external box for 3 drives with very small space around the internal boxes and more packing material to fill the void.  This is how they should always ship hard drives.  And how I was getting drives from Amazon.
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