Western Digital My Book Essential 4TB

Someone said that the USB drives tends to be lower quality than the standalone units, but it would be interesting to know if they are standard sized and interfaced. They are cheap, but given that you loose the 2 year warranty (atleast here) it's nothing I would consider atleast :)
 
TBH I don't understand how these external drives are always so much cheaper than the internal ones. They contain more stuff! Are the drives inside drives they normall wouldn't sell or something?

Reason I'm curious is because I can get these for the equivalent of $240 including taxes where I live. (We have 25% tax on everything we buy)
 
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I've heard one reason is they don't have to test/validate the drive with a hundred different computers, motherboards, SATA controllers, etc. They just have to certify it for the USB housing they are sticking it in. So it costs less to support and they can get it out into the retail channel faster.
 
Some of them don't have a real SATA drive controller in them, the controller board has a USB interface that goes directly to the drive. Not sure you can take them out and stick in a regular computer and have it work.
 
Firebug24k said:
Some of them don't have a real SATA drive controller in them, the controller board has a USB interface that goes directly to the drive. Not sure you can take them out and stick in a regular computer and have it work.
Click to expand...

I've never heard of such a thing, do you have any evidence to back this up?
 
Haven't seen it personally, but I asked in another thread about why 3TB drives were so cheap, and the responses I got in that thread was that they had different logic boards in some models.

EDIT: Here's one.... http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1711665
 
USB drives are normally cheaper because they typically come with less warranty. Almost every time you sell something with a warranty, you have to set money aside for a "warranty" (e.g. contra) account so that when someone does call, you already budgeted the number. Less warranty time means less money in reserve.
 
That's the bizarre thing - most of the new drives have 3 year warranties - longer than the internal ones.
 
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