From: keith_nuttle@yahoo.com   
      
   On 02/18/2026 2:26 PM, Lars Poulsen wrote:   
   > The recent story about "incredible" hard drive prices at Walmart   
   > was interesting. The product page did say that the product was shipped   
   > to customers from a 3rd party vendor in China/HongKong/Taiwan. The price   
   > was less than what similar offshare vendors charge for the better   
   > enclosures (without a drive). So yes, clearly this would be trash.   
   >   
   > After a recent rebuild of my main computers (one Windows, one Linux)   
   > I was looking at external drives to use with them, and discovered   
   > that my nice, recent 6TB external drive (SeaGate Backup+ Hub) will not   
   > to SMART on my Linux system, although it apparently will on Windows.   
   > At least on Windows, I can read the SMART attributes with the SeaTools   
   > utility, but the Linux version of SeaTools does not show a SMART tab.   
   > "smartctl -a /dev/sd?" says SMART is "available but disabled".   
   > The drive inside is a "Firecuda" which has a full complement of SMART   
   > data.   
   >   
   > So I am looking at (empty) external enclosures. Cheap Chinese products   
   > start at $10/unit, at $16/unit some decent ones are stocked at Amazon   
   > warehouses for next day delivery, but those are disappointing. Half of   
   > them have bad reliability histories with several customer reviews saying   
   > they died after about 4 months, and the other half do not support SMART.   
   > The ones that do have good reliabilty and SMART support are closer to   
   > $60/unit.   
   >   
   > Any experience and recommendations?   
   >   
   I just bought two enclosures from Walmart.  One was for a 1TB HP laptop   
   drive ($9) and the other was for a 2TB HP Desktop Harddrive ($17). There   
   was no shipping plus tax.  Both connection were USB3 with the larger USB   
   plug.  The laptop enclosure came with its own power addapter.  The   
   Laptop drive used the power from the computer.   
      
   It took several weeks to obtain them, as I did not at the time realize   
   they were order from China and shipped to the North Carolina.-   
      
   While I have only had them for about a month, Both installed easily into   
   the enclosure with out a hitch. I was able to access them from Windows   
   11 by plugging them into the computer.  They seem to be sturdy, but have   
   no information on long term stability or ruggedness. They will both be   
   use as secondary backup devices.   The laptop 1TB drive will be used   
   with Windows File History for back up. The desktop 2 TB will probably be   
   use the same way.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)