Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Amazon has the WD 18TB Elements drive for $299US - Can it be shucked? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I know WD has been clamping down on shucking capabilities lately, by requiring the drives to use their proprietary USB interface - more so on the MyBooks, but I don't know bout the Elements series.

Is this worth getting to shuck? And what model drive is usually inside?

Thanks!

--- DS

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I don't know if they still do this, but MyBook* used to use encryption on their interface, preventing use of the drives outside the enclosure. Not an issue if you're planning to format the drive outside the enclosure.

That didn't prevent you from USING the disk, but it would just prevent you from using the encrypted data via the enclosure - without the enclosure. The disks themselves were perfectly normal, even regularly branded (green or even red) at the time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Yes, Thank you!

I've edited my post to reflect that as I wasn't clear on that point!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Op is referring to boards with usb headers, rather than sata, I think.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is part of my point, there were never such 3.5" drives.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I may be misremembering and confusing it for a 2.5, but I really really feel like I've gotten one before.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

AFAIK, with the exception of WD and Toshiba 2.5" portables which have the USB interface integrated in the mainboard, there is no 2.5" or 3.5" drive in any external that is proprietary or locked in any way to prevent it from being used as an internal once formatted.

This is especially true for Mac users. You don't need to buy pre-formatted Mac externals. You can always format any external to whatever file system you choose.