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There's a sale on external hard drives at a store. The prices are really good, and the prices on internal hard drives are much higher. Would it be possible to crack open an external hard drive and use the drive from inside in a NAS? I don't know if there's anything different about the drives used in external hard drives that would make it incompatible, just want to make sure it'll work before spending the $$. I know it'll void the warranty by opening up the enclosure.
I'm guessing you specifically mean 3.5" external hard drives. Which models are you looking at? I know some of the Western Digital externals have red drives in them, which are basically what you'd buy for NAS. There are articles/videos about "shucking" external drives.
It's a Western Digital 14TB Easystore. The model number is WDBCKA0140HBK-NESN.
If the hard drive within the external enclosure is actually a normal 'ol SATA type hard drive, plugged into a separate little SATA-to-USB electronics board inside the enclosure, then yes, it could be removed from the enclosure and connected to the normal 'ol SATA data and power cables within a desktop computer.
However, I have seen a few external hard drives (Western Digital is one) that have the "SATA-to-USB" built right into the electronics board on the bottom of the hard drive, (instead of being part of the enclosure as above). You may be able to remove the external case but it would still need to be connected through that built-in SATA-to-USB on the hard drive.
Not 100% sure about the 14TB models, but it seems like that would be a red drive also.
Try searching "WDBCKA0140HBK-NESN red"
Ex.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder..._week_is_reds/