I’ve been following this lately, as I was also puzzled why “EasyStore” drives weren’t visible on WD’s product websites (although they are present on the US support site), or non-US online retailers.
It’s indeed a Best-Buy proprietary offering; unlike the 4TB version, for the 8TB version, it appears to now always contain a WD Red SATA drive (intended for NAS storage, and retailing at $230-$270). Some early batches contained an even more expensive drive, a HGST (formerly Hitachi, now owned by WD) enterprise-grade 7200RPM drive. Therefore many people in need of NAS (home or business storage server) drives are buying them at BB, and “shucking” them for the bare drive.
Given current trends in cloud storage, WD doesn’t actually have a consumer grade (“Blue” or “Green”) drive at >4TB sizes and is unlikely to do so, explaining why they’re putting the Red drive in the 8TB Easystore; all their other 8+ TB drives are even more expensive (Red Pro for bigger NASes, Ae for enterprise, Gold for Datacenters etc.)
