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Re: Why are external drives cheaper than internal?

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VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote
> 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.

No, just someone else having done it and
showing the open one on youtube etc.

> There are lots of things you can do if you knew
> how to do them correctly, even heart surgery.

And now its trivially easy to see if someone has
done it before you and has taken some photos.

>>> 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.

Says he carefully deleting from the quoting where
I told him how to get the drive manufacturer and
model number without opening the case.

>>> 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.

Nope. Those have cops that will book you when you ignore them.

Any jurisdiction with even half a clue forces the manufacturer
to honor the warranty even when the sticker has been removed.

>>> 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 that can be trivially seen in the report of
someone else who has opened it before you.

> 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).

Fuck all have anything like that with the commodity drives being discussed.

>>> 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.

Pity that has no legal value as far as the warranty is concerned.

>>> 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?

We aren't discussing HDD seals, we are discussing CASE seals.

And yes, I have made a warranty claim with systems that have
had the CASE seal that some fool has put on the CASE seam
and tried to claim that breaching that voids the warranty and
have had the warranty honored because they know that that
is pure bluff and that I would have fucked them over using the
legal system if they had tried to avoid honoring the warranty.

> I have.  It came back rejected (warranty voided).  Yeah, a bluff, uh huh.

Not with the CASE being discussed.

>>> or use snap-together cases that get damaged when forcibly unsnapped?

>> They don't when they are opened properly.

> Oh, I see,

Like hell you do.

> if I "properly" break into someone's house and sneak back out
> (no damage, no trace, nothing taken) then the break-in is okay.

No one ever said anything even remotely like that.

It's YOUR property, you are legally free to open the
case without damaging it if you want to do that.

> It's "If you don't get caught then it's legal".

Wrong again.

>>> 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.

Pity about the make and model that shows up
with almost all drives on the SMART report.

> It's the hardware ID (firmware string) that identifies the device.

I said SMART REPORT for a reason.

> Yes, you can use the drive maker's own utility to get that
> info since they know how to retrieve the firmware string.

And any even halfway decent SMART report includes it too.

> I was hoping there were 3rd party utilities that would
> extract the hardware ID from the device's firmware.

There are, they are called SMART utes.

> Actually I was disappointed that none of the USB enumeration
> data would identify the HDD in the external USB enclosure.

Sure, that would certainly be a good approach.

> Couldn't find anything that said getting S.M.A.R.T. data would
> divulge the hardware ID (which contains maker and model)

You could have got real radical and had a look at the
SMART reports that are all over the web and seen the drive
manufacturer and model listed on almost all of those.

> and burned into the drive's IDE chip

It isn't necessarily burned, some manufacturers have
it stored on the platter so its easy for them to have
different models which use drives which have one
platter surface which isn't viable to use etc.

> (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.

Most SMART utes show it at the top of the SMART report.

> 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.

I can't think of a SMART ute that doesn't include the drive's manufacturer
and drive model number at the top of the SMART report.

> 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.

So use a decent SMART ute that does and
give you the full SMART report as well.

> 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.

So as I said, there is no need to open the case to work out
what drive is being used in a particular external hard drive.

> S.M.A.R.T. and USB enumeration doesn't provide any of the ID info.

But almost all SMART reports do in fact have the drive manufacturer
and model listed at the top of the SMART report, presumably
because it can be handy to see which drive the report is about.

> 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.

So, like I said, there is no need to open the case to see
what drive is used in a particular external hard drive. 

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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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