I’ve heard that you can send the drives back without the enclosure and they have still honored the warranty. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/am9vdv/easysto...

You need to take 10 minutes out of your day to remove the plastic enclosure. Depending on your setup, you may also need to make some minor modifications to the drive: google.com/search?q=3.3V+wd+easystore

The theory is that this is a form of market segmentation, where enthusiasts/companies are willing to pay more for a bare drive regular consumers.

The only catch is that it's a minor lottery which model drive you're getting.

For instance, I got all white label WD80EMAZs (256MB cache, non-SMR, same firmware as the Reds) in this batch, so I had to insulate the 3.3V pins.

There are also true Reds, 128MB and 512MB cache drives, helium filleds, 7.2K HGSTs slowed to 5.4K, and other variants.