There is a reason why an internal OEM drive with no outer casing is more expensive than an external with the extra outer casing and electronics.
If you pay more for a heavy duty external then you will have something that is durable and less likely to fail. Externals are okay as internals until they are not and it is your data that will pay the extra price.
I’m not sure I get one aspect of this. There is no difference whatsoever between a WD Black (say) itself in reliability terms in either an internal or external housing - it’s the same device. You buy that as a part number wherever it’s going. I use those drives internally and externally. If it’s going to break in a external housing it’s just as likely to break in a PC (subject of course to not throwing it around etc)… Moving the drive from external housing to internal bay won’t affect the MTBF all other things being equal.
First off, most external drives don’t tell you what is inside. Just check Amazon and other stores and you might notice this fact.
But internals all show you exactly what model and type of drive. You have to search all over the web to find out any kind of info on the type of drive inside an external enclosure.
The descriptions on Amazon tell you in most cases the size and speed but nothing about the model or durability of the drive concealed within the enclosure.
People buy them thinking these drives are useable as internal drives, they are not.
I have an 18TB internal drive, a 12TB internal drive, two 8TB internal, a 4TB SSD, a 2TB SSD, and a 5TB external drive, they are nearly all full of data. That covers only one of my PCs and I have been buying storage since MSDOS, cassette tape backup on TRS80s and Commodore floppies.
It was an associate at the Seagate factory that told me that the drives within external enclosures were “not heavy duty” unless specifically marked as such.
They at the factory were very nice, they replaced a drive for me free that failed, I bought an external, removed it from the enclosure and lost my data after a few months of gaming and recording video on the drive.
They said they would replace the drive this time but in the future to remember that external drives are not heavy duty. They replaced my drive with a heavy duty one.
As for if two WD blacks are the same? I would think yes, they are generally all the same maybe a few part differences here and there.
But that comes back to my observation that Amazon and most other stores only tell you the size and not the model of external drives. So people like me will go out and buy them thinking they can be used as an internal drive and have them fail in a few months. If you are using an external drive as an internal drive, it is only a matter of time…
If these were heavy duty drives, surely they would list the model of the drive inside the enclosure in the store page description. Nearly none of them tell you what is inside.
And could they have two different models of the WD Black? The internal model and the external model? I think that is a question for the company to answer. And read the fine print “product subject to change without notice”.
But the fact that they (in nearly all cases) don’t even tell you what kind of drive is inside the enclosure should give you pause to think.
Notice also that most externals have a 3 year warranty, not a 5 year warranty like the internals.
If using a HDD for audio I only use Seagate Barracuda Green as they are the fastest and best - never had a problem (touch wood) but experienced reliability issues with all other HDD’s. I use SSD’s where possible, I have 8TB Nvme blades which are lovely and back everything up nightly to the the Seagate HDD’s which I used for audio for the past ten years no problem:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BarraCuda2TB--seagate-barracuda-2tb-7200-rpm-3.5-inch-desktop-hard-drive
You are absolutely right and there is no disagreement here, and your valuable concerns should be heeded by anyone buying an ‘anonymous’ drive in a box.
I was seeking to highlight that vendors like QNAP / Icy Box etc sell “unpopulated” enclosures which have no drive in, and you can have your BarraCuda Green or WD Black or any drive model you want, which can provide ‘enterprise’ external storage…
No. Vendors of these drives don’t have any specification as to whether they are external or internal, and they have no way of knowing whether they will be installed in either way. You can get a BarraCuda from @davides link an put it in your enclosure.
there’s an 8TB SSD on Amazon for $90, and you can get 2TB USB drives for $30, I’ve been running 6 external hard drives for the past decade and I’m looking to transfer that 12+ TB of sample libraries on to SSD’s in the next few months.
Post a link. That is impossible. Got to be a scam.
I just found it. THe drive is actually named 8TB External Hard Drive SSD A01 while the capacity is listed as 4000 G. All the reviews are for some sort of food product and this is the name of the company -
SILAIDEQIANJUJINGYINGBU. 
Why to choose us:
There is some truth to what you’re talking about here but in my opinion and experience this is a vast generalization. If you buy strictly on price, yes you’re probably going to get a less reliable drive. But there is nothing inherent about buying an external drive that makes it less reliable. All the external drives I have are the same drives as the internals just put into an external case. And I never shop on Amazon but where I buy parts from externals are typically more expensive, not less expensive, because you’re paying for the case, sometimes an external power supply and the interface to make the drive connect to USB (or whatever interface it connects to).
Maybe what you’re acquaintance is talking about is the cheap little laptop drives shoved into external cases. And it wouldn’t surprise me if those were less reliable. I have a couple of those but I only use them to carry a 2nd copy of important data when I’m traveling or for quick short term back ups or transferring large files between machines when a thumb drive isn’t practical. But even those I think I have 3 of them total and I’ve had a couple of them for many years and had zero issues.
As for the over all reliability of spinning hard drives, yes the mechanisms can freeze up if they sit around for a long time. But flash memory fails can also fail over time and most of the articles I’ve read about making archives said don’t use any flash memory for long term archives. They are less reliable than traditional hard drives. I’ve been using hard drives for archives for years now, since I stopped buring DVD-Rs. I don’t think any have failed when I tried to access them. But I also try my best to keep two copies of everything archived. That’s the goal anyway, I don’t always get around to it.
Optical media also degrades over time as well.
If you want to use an internal drive but don’t have space in a computer for one, just get a drop in dock. You can buy the large, robust serve drives, drop them into the dock when you need them and store them in plastic cases when not in use.
Not necessarily, appropriate capacity of high speed data storage is a moving target. A few years ago I purchased the NI Komplete Ultimate series of digital instruments, which all together (+ Maschine and all its extensions) is well over a 1TB of files. And I found a notable speed difference when putting the whole Komplete collection on an SSD, even the non-sample based instruments. Some of my play styles comprise of automated rapid preset switching during performance, even even just loading presets on the fly can cause problems with a traditional HDD, where the response time depends on the cache.
I think you might mean that SSDs have to be connected to the PC over a fast bus. There is no point to have a 2000MB/s SSD connected to an old laptop over USB1 
Hello RBIngraham,
I am not referring to laptop drives, I am talking about full sized PC external drives i.e. Seagate, WD etc.
I am not sure where you buy your drives, I am referring, again, to Amazon, NewEgg and BestBuy… where the vast majority of people buy theirs. The warranties are two years less than OEMS, and they are indeed less expensive than OEM drives with no enclosures. When you remove them from the enclosures (which I have many times) they do not have a recognizable model type printed on the front. And, as I was told by the manufacturer, they are meant for storage and not rigorous game and video editing use. Always back up your data indeed, and make certain you know what exact model of drive they are a selling within that enclosure. When you pay less just realize you are getting what you pay for. It is not less because it is on sale, it is less because it is not heavy duty. It has a 3 year and not a 5 year warranty for the same reason.
Just seconding what Bernd said so well here. You absolutely need a lot more than 512GB of SSD space if you’re working with sample libraries. I think I have something like 9TB of SSD space spread across 6 SSD drives. And I’m almost running out… again. (and this doesn’t count the NVMe system drive for my computer)
Even if we’re just talking about the system drive that stores your OS and applications, unless I’m working on a machine that has a very narrow focus and is doing a single task (I have several computers that just production computers for live performance for example) I would still look to get at least a 1TB drive at this point. By the time you install a DAW or two and all your various apps and some support software, a 512GB drive would likely be at least half full, if not more.
And yes you do need to connect all those drive to a fast USB bus. I have mine spread across a Thunderbolt/USB C bus and a USB 3.1 bus. The large USB hubs are really the bottleneck from what I have seen.
OK, fair enough, whatever. I’m not really interested in debating but it seems like you’re just not comparing apples to apples. I mostly buy from Microcenter. I just looked there and sure there are external drives in a USB 3 case that are cheaper than an OEM drive of the same size. But the OEM drive are also usually a server quality drive specifically built for an NAS. So yeah of course it’s going to be more expensive. I couldn’t really find that many fair comparisons to be honest. Most of the external drives I found that were not at least 6TB or larger, were actually little 2.5" drives, not 3.5" drives. But I could find a 3.5" OEM drive of similar capacity for less money in most cases. But that’s not really comparing the same thing. Incidentally the differences in warranties on some of the Western Digitals I found was 2 years for the cheap external and 3 years for the server class drive. Which also makes sense.
Either way what the original poster was asking about seems like they are looking to store sample libraries and these days those should really be done on an SSD and not a spinning drive. And while there are speed differences between an internal NVMe and something like a Samsung T5 or T7 external, I doubt one is any more reliable than the other.
Respectfully I just don’t think your initial response applies all that well to what they were asking. But that’s just my opinion obviously.
For what it’s worth I have two Western Digital MyBooks here. And while I personally don’t recommend them because they like to have you install these special apps to modify their settings (like sleep times) I’ve had one for almost 10 years and another for probably like 15 years. And they have worked just fine and I’ve never had any issues other than disliking how you control them. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, who knows. Both of mine were inherited really. One was from an employer who gave it to me to complete work for them and didn’t want it back when I stopped working for them. And the other was from my late father in law. So I’ve used them and they have performed just fine and appropriately for what I would assume their original prices to be.
I think you can run into dud hard drives in almost any price class and from almost every manufacturer. That’s certainly been my experience. There have been eras where you really want to avoid certain manufacturers or certain product lines from pretty much every manufacturer out there. IBM clicks of death years (which is now Toshiba), crappy years at Seagate, etc… Sounds like you ran into some duds to me.
Hello RBIngraham, my own experience has taught me not to water down what I am saying and what was told to me by the manufacturers.
That fact that your drives have lasted are the exception here, not the rule. Yes, server drives are heavy duty and so are gaming and drives marketed to video/photography editors.
Most externals are not made for sustained read and write over prolonged periods of time. When they stop working nothing will make them boot again. Just think about it, with the enclosure, it is less money? Something has to make up for that profit loss. It is made up in durability and ruggedness in the internal mechanism.
I posted this as a courtesy to the original poster so they would not be tempted to buy and external due to the low price and expect heavy duty use from it. So it is appropriate to their original query. Your post only makes my claim that most people do not know this more valid.
As I said, “most” external drives are meant to fill with data and leave on a shelf for 10 years. There are exceptions to this case but make sure you know what model of drive is inside and don’t just take durability for granted. The majority of them are not rated for constant use and they will fail “generally” sooner rather than later under heavy sustained use.
I know this both from experience and from what was told to me by Seagate when they kindly replaced my dead drive with a “heavy duty” (as they called it) one.
I will also say that I keep my Native Instruments Collector’s Edition Kontakt files on a spinning disk drive and it works fine, but I also have an I9 12 core processor and 64gb of very fast ram.
Some other advice, don’t buy a laptop and expect it to function as a PC workstation and don’t buy an external drive and expect it to “generally” function as an internal.
Many great songs were recorded on laptops but that is again, the exception, not the rule.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree I guess.
@RexRed your insight is certainly interesting, and I’ll consider it when I’ll buy another HD
I have to say I am not a PRO, so:
I keep music SSDs OFF most of the day, and just put them ON when I use them
I do a complete backup each day or another SSDs that will go OFF just after
I think that this is enough for an amateur, but maybe I am wrong
cheers
I’ve got 5 externals that have been running as far back as 2009, and they are chock full of sample libraries, my audio/video collections, and data backups of my multi-track recordings and video captures & edits. All drives, some 23 TBs in total, are running today & everyday. They were all manufactured by Western Digital. I have had a few read errors on the oldest, and I’ve been parking it unless I’m actually accessing. The other 22 TBs run 24/7. If you need an external I would suggest WD.