It is always because of money and risk.

External drive warranty is voided as soon as it is disassembled. They generally offer same or shorter warranty period. It has added padding between the drive and enclosure so the unit is always well-protected even dropping it from a certain height. All accessories are provided by themselves, therefore, most of the factors are under their control.

However, as if they are selling it a nude drive, except the driver board is being exposed, these manufacturers are exposing themselves to higher risk as well. Let's forget moral for a second and think about this: If you drop a drive and it stopped working, do you think they will still honour the warranty claim? I believe the answer is yes since they are unable (or might not even worth them) to prove that you dropped the drive instead of the drive has developed a fault internally. And yet you have to calculate risk like damages due to bad installation or faulty PSU etc.

Of course, they know people are buying external drives and taking them apart due to lower cost. But if that is the case, they are basically selling a drive that they don't have to be responsible for the coming 2 years. And I am quite certain that the cost of providing support and warranty for 2 years is much higher than what the customer can potentially save.

Customer might save £20 initially, but they have taken on more risks, if the drive does breakdown within warranty, you will end up with a piece of metal where in the other case, £20 for a refurbished drive, I will say it is a pretty good deal :smiley:

And lastly, let's not forget they can also sneak refurbished drive into the external unit and make more money money money.

(Sorry for the lengthly reply hahahahahaahahahah)

HDD prices are definitely increasing in general. You will get the occasional good deal on external drives but still, prices are going up. Why external drives are cheaper, I don't know. I guess there is probably a bigger market for external but I mean, external drives have to have a drive, why use different HDDs? You're adding an enclosure, power supply e.t.c. and charging more for a bare drive. Madness. Price collusion and cartels with WD and Seagate.

I bought a WD 4TB Green in May 2015 for £113. The equivalent WD 4TB Blue (as green is being phased out) is now £127.

since when were hdd prices going up?

now waiting for amazon to match the price...

Does anyone know if the drive is soldered to the case?

Ordered one of these over breakfast this morning and contemplated putting it up myself until the site told me it was already added 3 months ago, is still live and is still cold!
Heat from me.

Be good to know what drive they put inside.....

this is not an ssd drive that uses nand. It's a mechanical drive so the shortage is irrelevant

good find op, heat added

How reliable are the drives tho?

Read the article. It applies to mechanical drives too.

Thanks, just trying to track down large 5400rpm cool running drives.

HDD prices are definitely increasing in general. You will get the occasional good deal on external drives but still, prices are going up. Why external drives are cheaper, I don't know. I guess there is probably a bigger market for external but I mean, external drives have to have a drive, why use different HDDs? You're adding an enclosure, power supply e.t.c. and charging more for a bare drive. Madness. Price collusion and cartels with WD and Seagate.

I bought a WD 4TB Green in May 2015 for £113. The equivalent WD 4TB Blue (as green is being phased out) is now £127.

Jimbb, thanks for this input.

If you want another excuse, bear in mind the pound has been going down against other currencies for the last 6 months, especially the dollar, and will probably either stay the same or continue for at least the next year, unless Trump really screws up.

That's been my excuse for all the electronics I've been buying anyway :-)

I'll ask so someone else doesn't have to lol. Can this be used for a PS4?

I've never thought of it from that angle before Jimbb. Quite clever really. Force your customers to void warranties chasing a bargain so they don't have to deal with it in the future.

eBuyer are Messer's

​Yeah was planning on adding it to my xbox one for some extra storage, allready got a 2tb seagate one connected but that's nearly full :disappointed:

I bought a 4TB external several years ago for roughtly the same price.. I'd expect 8TB's to be this price now.
Cold to the industry. Not a hot deal imo so not voting.

edit: bought 4TB TOURO feb 2013 @ ~£130

5TB is a lot to store on one drive, a lot to lose

i have 500gb, 1tb, 2tb, 4tb hard drives. should i wait for 8tb or get this hmmmmm...

one of the worst desktop hard drives. went faulty within 6 months of buying the 4tb version a year back. Go Western Digital

Waiting for a good NAS deal on here but they seem few and far between. Hope my patience pays off!

How is the noise on these? I hear Toshiba drives are quite noisy.

Bought one recently and returned it within few days. This drive is extremely noisy and sounds like a dying HDD. I shouldn't of ignored the reviews I guess. It's unfortunate as the Toshiba 2/3TB drives work great, and never had any issues with them. But these days I would recommend WD Elements drives over these.

Surely this invalidates the warranty? USB3.0 should be fast enough right ? I mean USB 3.0 at 5Gbits has a rate of 5 Gbit/s (625 MB/s) ... i'm quite sure the drive itself will not be that fast.

That's correct. Warranty is voided when you pry it off. But if you want to use it as an internal drive, that's the only way.

But if you only want to use it as it intended to (external drive), of course USB 3.0 is more than enough to max out the driver itself.

Tried it, £125

I bought this when it was £98 on Amazon.

It does get hot and you can hear a clicking sound every now and again.

I sit it on top a fan and that keeps down the temps.

Just use it as a backup drive.

If I was to use it often, I would take it out and run it internally.

Synology are pretty picky with their recommended drives. The internal HD is on the approved list.

Noisy drive but good value.

Bizarrely mine has started to cause my windows 10 PC to blue screen on occasion if plugged in on boot?