Gamestop.com recently had a crazy sale on a 1TB external NVME for $50. It’s hard to get a 1TB SSD for that price, let alone an NVMe one with an enclosure.
But what kind of drive is inside? Is it shuckable? Turns out the internal drive is much more Blue than Black. Here’s what Hard Disk Sentinel told me:
Hard Disk Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 1
Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : ASMedia ASM236X USB-NVMe (UASP)
Vendor Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : VID: 1058, PID: 2653
Disk Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller - 1.0 (Microsoft) (USB 3.0, v2.10) [VEN: 8086, DEV: A12F] Version: 10.0.19041.1566, 2-10-2022
Hard Disk Model ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Western Digital SN550E
Firmware Revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 21004100
Hard Disk Serial Number . . . . . . . . . . . . : 21260H801927
Total Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 953867 MB
Power State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Active
Logical Drive(s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : D: [Game Drive]
Current Temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 27 °C
Power On Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 0 days, 0 hours
Estimated Remaining Lifetime . . . . . . . . . . : more than 1000 days
Lifetime Writes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 1 MB
Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : #################### 100 % (Excellent)
Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : #################### 100 % (Excellent)Turns out this D30 drive (at least my version) contains a Western Digital Blue SN550E inside. Here’s WD’s listing for this drive.
Is it shuckable? I undid each of the 8 screws, but did not have the bravery to pry the plastic off. Luckily, mendrisio on Slickdeals was braver than me and confirmed the NVMe drive is indeed shuckable, writing:
Open it up from the side that has the WD_Black label. Its four hex screws can be removed with an H2.0 bit. It’ll take a few spudgers to get the cover off the case. The thin guitar pick type worked okay after a bit of trial and error. Once the cover is open, there are three Phillips head screws holding down the converter PCB and drive. Remove those. The PCB and drive will remain in place due to a sticky thermal pad affixing the drive to the metal heatsink. Got a little nervous here but I was able to carefully pry it away little by little. Thermal pad falls apart easily and I don’t see how it can be reused.
https://slickdeals.net/forums/showpost.php?p=154928323&postcount=98
So all in all, a great deal for an external drive with the flexibility of shucking the drive to use as an internal drive if needed!