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Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal?

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Rod Speed wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote
>
>> Some cases are designed to snap together.  Prying the half shells
>> apart often breaks off a tang or lip
>
> Not if you do it correctly it doesn't.

That requires pre-knowledge so you have already opened the same shells
before.  There are lots of things you can do if you knew how to do them
correctly, even heart surgery.

>> which is a telltale sign of opening the case.
>
> Anyone with even half a clue checks which drive is in the case
> electronically.

Thanks for the highly informative response.

>> Some put stickers on.  If the seal is broke, removed, defaced, altered,
>> tampered, or rendered unintelligble then warranty is voided.
>
> Wrong. Those claims are pure bluff.

Uh huh, and so are stop signs.

>> Some put a seal on the inside.
>
> Not even possible because there is no way to check if the seal has
> been breached without opening it.

Frangible seal.  Put on the inside.  Open shell from the opposite side
(which you must know) and do not open very much to check integrity
before fully opening; else, the seal delaminates, and you cannot reach
there to put another seal in its place (well, maybe you can using an
elongated forceps and you somehow happened to have another same seal).

>> Some require screws be removed and they are below the label so you
>> have to puncture the label to get at the screws.
>
> Just because some fool claims something...

Even fools can see puncture holes in labels.

>> If they didn't care about boobs getting inside their cases, why put
>> seals on the case, put screws under labels,
>
> Pure bluff.

Ever try to return an HDD under warranty but with the seal missing?  I
have.  It came back rejected (warranty voided).  Yeah, a bluff, uh huh.

>> or use snap-together cases that get damaged when forcibly unsnapped?
>
> They don't when they are opened properly.

Oh, I see, if I "properly" break into someone's house and sneak back out
(no damage, no trace, nothing taken) then the break-in is okay.  It's
"If you don't get caught then it's legal".

>> How is that performed [not opening the case] (to get at the firmware
>> string from the HDD through the USB-to-SATA converter PCB)?
>
> It shows up on the SMART report etc.

Sorry, don't know the etc program. ;->

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

Which of the SMART attributes give the maker and model?  None.

It's the hardware ID (firmware string) that identifies the device.  Yes,
you can use the drive maker's own utility to get that info since they
know how to retrieve the firmware string.  I was hoping there were 3rd
party utilities that would extract the hardware ID from the device's
firmware.  Actually I was disappointed that none of the USB enumeration
data would identify the HDD in the external USB enclosure.

Couldn't find anything that said getting S.M.A.R.T. data would divulge
the hardware ID (which contains maker and model) and burned into the
drive's IDE chip (and why I often refer to it as the firmware string).
HD Sentinel seems capable of pulling the hardware ID from the drive but
they present that separately of the S.M.A.R.T. data.  Then I found:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/17973/How-To-Get-Hardware-Information-CPU-ID-MainBoard-I
http://www.soft.tahionic.com/download-hdd_id/hardware%20id%20programming%20source%20code/idex.html

So, yep, you have to query the devices to get their hardware ID string
and other device attributes.  Not all utilities to retrieve the firmware
string parse out all values.  Piriform's Speccy will give me the serial
number and firmware version but not the hardware ID (maker+model) and
only a couple S.M.A.R.T. attribute values.  HD Sentinel gives me most
S.M.A.R.T. data and also parses more out of the firmware string: VID,
PID, hard disk model ID (maker+model), firmware version, and serial
number.

S.M.A.R.T. and USB enumeration doesn't provide any of the ID info.  I
had forgotten that I installed HD Sentinel.  I have found other tools,
like those above, that will poll the devices to query for their firmware
string(s) to parse out values, like hardware ID.

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Thread

Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Percival P. Cassidy" <Nobody@NotMyISP.net> - 2015-09-10 10:46 -0400
  Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Mark Perkins <mark@none.invalid> - 2015-09-10 12:09 -0500
    Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Mark F <mark53916@gmail.com> - 2015-09-10 15:05 -0400
      Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> - 2015-09-10 20:27 +0000
        Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Mark Perkins <mark@none.invalid> - 2015-09-10 15:59 -0500
          Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-09-11 07:14 +1000
          Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> - 2015-09-11 02:01 +0000
          Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? larrymoencurly@my-deja.com - 2015-09-17 21:58 -0700
            Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Mark Perkins <mark@none.invalid> - 2015-09-30 17:50 -0500
              Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Ed Light <nobody@nobody.there> - 2015-09-30 19:58 -0700
              Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Mark F <mark53916@gmail.com> - 2015-10-04 12:24 -0400
      Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Percival P. Cassidy" <Nobody@NotMyISP.net> - 2015-09-10 17:00 -0400
        Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2015-09-10 22:10 -0500
          Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-09-13 04:45 +1000
            Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2015-09-14 05:04 -0500
              Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-09-15 05:00 +1000
                Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2015-09-14 19:16 -0500
                Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Ed Light <nobody@nobody.there> - 2015-09-15 00:03 -0700
                Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2015-09-15 18:57 -0500
                Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-09-16 13:14 +1000
                Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Ed Light <nobody@nobody.there> - 2015-09-16 14:12 -0700
                Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-09-16 05:01 +1000
                Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2015-09-15 18:57 -0500
                Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-09-16 13:12 +1000
              Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? larrymoencurly@my-deja.com - 2015-09-17 22:50 -0700
        Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Mark F <mark53916@gmail.com> - 2015-09-11 18:44 -0400
  Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-09-11 07:15 +1000
    Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Percival P. Cassidy" <Nobody@NotMyISP.net> - 2015-09-10 17:48 -0400
      Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Mark Perkins <mark@none.invalid> - 2015-09-10 21:08 -0500
  Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Sam <newsgroup2003@gmail.com> - 2016-01-22 21:24 -0800
    Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Percival P. Cassidy" <Nobody@NotMyISP.net> - 2016-01-23 10:32 -0500
      Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? jerryab@juno.com - 2016-01-24 09:59 -0600
        Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2016-01-25 05:06 +1100
          Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? jerryab@juno.com - 2016-01-25 09:26 -0600
            Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2016-01-26 06:23 +1100
            Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? "Percival P. Cassidy" <Nobody@NotMyISP.net> - 2016-01-25 15:38 -0500
            Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal? Ed Light <nobody@nobody.there> - 2016-01-25 16:38 -0800

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