HDDs - Current Best Unit Price (Dollars per TB) for Decent Brand and Reliable Source

Alan6984 on 16/08/2024 - 11:25

Hi All,

Just wondering what people are currently aiming for in terms of the best unit price (dollars per TB) for HDDs.

I would prefer to go for a known brand name (for example, but not limited to, WD, SeaGate etc), and from a reliable source (for example, PBTech, Computer Lounge, Amazon, but not AliExpress for example).

If buying in person, I am in Auckland - preferably more Central or South than North or West Auckland.

My last buy was a SeaGate from Amazon Australia:

Seagate IronWolf 12TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD
CMR 3.5 Inch
SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 256MB Cache
(ST12000VNZ008 / ST12000VN0008)

https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B084ZTSMWF

for which I paid NZ$376.37 inc GST and freight but that was more than a year ago, so I am almost certainly out of date in terms of what the current best deals are and that one is over $400 now (which might still be the best deal currently I guess).

I would not want to go less than, say, 6TB, but 12TB would be good, or more if the price per TB was good.

If, say, 6TB was a sweet spot, I'd just buy two at that price / size.

Thanks,

Alan.

General Discussion

Comments

  • wellydeal on 16/08/2024 - 11:38
    +1

    This website has been mentioned multiple times on Ozb. I have previously bought from them & the drive still works fine. I didn't do any testing, just plugged it in & it worked

    • Alan6984 on 16/08/2024 - 12:29
      +1

      This website(east-digital.myshopify.com) has been mentioned multiple times on Ozb. I have previously bought from them & the drive still works fine. I didn't do any testing, just plugged it in & it worked

      Thanks Wellydeal.

      I'm sure they are fine, but would prefer to stick with 'well known' suppliers wherever possible. Those guys are in Hong Kong by the looks of it, and we would have some general concerns as to authenticity.

      • mr-deal on 16/08/2024 - 14:28

        People have been buying from them on Ozbargain for years (especially via eBay), they started a eShop due to the demand.

        Hong Kong is a central distribution point due to no import or sales taxes. Kogan for example, have a warehouse in Hong Kong…

        No matter where you buy from, ensure they have good packaging as there have been numerous instances of Amazon shipping drives in anti-static bags chucked in thin mailer bags and being DOA.

        • Alan6984 on 16/08/2024 - 15:21

          … there have been numerous instances of Amazon shipping drives in anti-static bags chucked in thin mailer bags and being DOA.

          Agreed that even Amazon has issues, but everyone that I know of who has had any problem whatsoever (tech stuff or otherwise) with an Amazon delivery has gotten a full refund without any problem, so I'm reasonably confident of them in that respect.

      • Alex on 17/08/2024 - 10:10

        I've bought several drives from them with no issues, both new and manufacturer refurbished. All Seagate Exos, but they also sell WD (for more than I could justify).

        Given the price difference, I could justify purchasing eight drives for prod, as well as two spares to swap in. They also only sell HDDs, and know how to package them. A friend ordered drives from Amazon at the same time, and his arrived poorly packaged with one physically damaged in transit.

        • kfr23 on 17/08/2024 - 19:29

          No, they also sell SSDs.

      • kiwijunglist on 17/08/2024 - 17:43

        That website should be fine, I'd definitely give it more consideration.

        I bought 4x 20TB HDD from amazon all were DOA and 1x HDD from B&H also DOA. Amazon offered refund only (not replacement), and the HDD were a very low price, so I RMA'd directly to HK at my expense.

        Another vote for unraid, although it is more expensive that it used to be. Unraid offers a free 30 day trial (and you can run expired trial as long as you don't reboot). You can also extend the trial twice giving a fresh 30 days each time for free.

    • Alan6984 on 17/08/2024 - 17:49

      Okay - you have all persuaded me to give them a chance….

  • ace310 on 16/08/2024 - 11:51

    I bought couple of Seagate 16TB IronWolf Pro from bhphoto, last november for US$216(~360) each. I would keep an eye on there as well.

    Also, I think 16tb-18tb currently is the good size for $/tb. I would not look anything below now.

    • Alan6984 on 16/08/2024 - 12:32

      I bought couple of Seagate 16TB IronWolf Pro(bhphotovideo.com) from bhphoto, last november for US$216(~360) each. I would keep an eye on there as well.

      Yep - I will add BHPhoto to my list as they have a solid reputation.

      That particular 16TB drive is US$320 + US$17.50 shipping = $US$337.50 ~ NZ$ 564. I am assuming that there is no additional GST or import duties at that price, but I could be wrong. If so, it is around NZ$35.25 per TB delivered.

      Also, I think 16tb-18tb currently is the good size for $/tb. I would not look anything below now.

      My guess was that it would be in the 10TB to 20TB range (pretty broad range - I know!), so good to get it confirmed from someone more up to speed with the current market!

  • ace310 on 16/08/2024 - 11:58

    If you don't mind shipping from US, I would setup alerts on Slickdeals.net for any good deals which can ship to NZ

    • Alan6984 on 16/08/2024 - 12:32

      If you don't mind shipping from US, I would setup alerts on Slickdeals.net(slickdeals.net) for any good deals which can ship to NZ

      I will have a look at Slickdeals.net. I am guessing it might be something akin to CC and / or OzB?

      • ace310 on 16/08/2024 - 12:33

        Yes, CC version for US.

  • Grandma on 16/08/2024 - 13:07

    Old HDDs were one of the only things I was consistently able to pinch from my old IT role (and cables!)

    Filled a NAS with old enterprise wd drives and been very happy.

    • Alan6984 on 16/08/2024 - 13:28

      Old HDDs were one of the only things I was consistently able to pinch from my old IT role (and cables!)

      Filled a NAS with old enterprise wd drives and been very happy.

      I'm not intending to implement a NAS in this situation currently - the drive(s) would be standalone.

      However, it is something I have been considering (I used to have one a while back), and implementing some type of RAID (5 or 6 perhaps), then just periodically replace the smallest individual drive in the array (which would, I believe, be the limiting factor in terms of overall storage) as and when it died or I got a good deal on a larger drive.

      I might set up a search on TradeMe to email me weekly (or whatever period) as its the kind of thing I could easily imagine being flicked off by a business for next to nothing if I'm patient, and I'm in no rush.

      I'm also thinking of setting something up in software under, say, Ubuntu Server (running on an old PC that has a good number of USB sockets), and either setup RAID and / or LVM in there (I already implement LVM by default on all new server setups, whereas I have only played around with software RAID up to now). I haven't thought through using both software RAID and LVM at the same time :-)

      • ace310 on 16/08/2024 - 13:55

        What's your purpose?

        There are many good options out there depending on your needs. Unraid is great user friendly HomeLab server, not your typical raid, but it gives you data protection in case of drive failure. TrueNAS is opposite of unraid. Proxmox can also do some form of storage solution or you can visualize something in it.

        I use unraid as my main storage server + many docker services + host windows & ubuntu VMs. Also, have Proxmox on a mini pc with few services which are exposed outside. All in all I am pretty happy with what I have.

        • Alan6984 on 16/08/2024 - 15:39

          What's your purpose?

          Purely to store backups and stuff that I could replace, but where it would be an annoyance to have to navigate those waters again.

          I wouldn't be storing a (running) LVM on the drive(s) that I am looking to purchase currently, but I will store backups such as qcow2 files, tar / rsync / dd image backups of LVM snapshots. They are all stored on a pair of synchronised drives at home and also in the office (so offsite from either direction), but my home 'drive' is out of space (actually two 4TB drives that are quite old - could be pushing ten years maybe), while the one in the office is the IronWolf 12TB I mentioned in my OP.

          There are many good options out there depending on your needs. Unraid is great user friendly HomeLab server, not your typical raid, but it gives you data protection in case of drive failure. TrueNAS is opposite of unraid. Proxmox can also do some form of storage solution or you can visualize something in it.

          For virtualisation, I use QEMU / KVM - nothing against ProxMox, but I am happy using virsh for most (if not all) virtualisation stuff. More generally, I tend to have an aversion to GUIs :-)

          I use unraid as my main storage server + many docker services + host windows & ubuntu VMs. Also, have Proxmox on a mini pc with few services which are exposed outside. All in all I am pretty happy with what I have.

          I haven't played with UnRAID myself, but I probably should!

          • ace310 on 16/08/2024 - 15:49

            @Alan6984: Main benefit of unraid is, you don't need same size drives in the array. You can start with what you have with an exception of the parity drive which has to be the same or bigger than the biggest drive in array. Keep adding upto 32 drives. Good part is the OS is on usb flash drive and is loaded to ram on Start.

            Here is my setup, small but pretty good for my need. All storage is on hdd with 1 Parity(redundancy) , all services running on nvme cache drive which is in ZFS mirror for redundancy and extra nvme is for temp downloads.

            • Alan6984 on 16/08/2024 - 16:07

              @ace310:

              Main benefit of unraid is, you don't need same size drives in the array. You can start with what you have with an exception of the parity drive which has to be the same or bigger than the biggest drive in array. Keep adding upto 32 drives. Good part is the OS is on usb flash drive and is loaded to ram on Start.

              Here is my setup, small but pretty good for my need. All storage is on hdd with 1 Parity(redundancy) , all services running on nvme cache drive which is in ZFS mirror for redundancy and extra nvme is for temp downloads.

              What is it running on hardware-wise? What is the USB flash drive (OS) inserted into?

              As I mentioned above, I don't currently have a drive array I could use. There is an old server lying around in the office somewhere, but that thing will use loads of power, and sounds like a 747 while running, which means it HAS to stay in the server room - if I brought it home, it would likely lead to divorce!!

              Could I start out playing around with it running (from USB flash drive) on an old PC that has, say, one internal SATA drive and two external USB drives? Capacity wouldn't really matter if I was only playing around with it to get up to speed.

              • ace310 on 16/08/2024 - 16:12

                @Alan6984: Just any old pc should work. Technically you don't even need an HDD to start running unraid.

                You would need an old pc, 1 usb flash drive and any size hdd or another flash drive which can be your array drive. That's all. Play around. Unraid has 30 days free trial for the flash drive you use. You can take that flash drive and all the drives to another computer and it will still work as the same.

                Here is my server, which was running Windows. I moved that same windows to VM and now it can do way more.
                https://www.cheapies.nz/node/42236

              • ace310 on 16/08/2024 - 16:15

                @Alan6984: Look at some spaceinvader one's videos or on reddit lots of great tutorials and info. Spaceinvader content is old, so things would have changed, but the concept is same. Lots of new content on yt

                • Alan6984 on 16/08/2024 - 16:49

                  @ace310: Thanks - it's on my YT 'to watch' list.

            • kiwijunglist on 18/08/2024 - 21:03

              @ace310: Also using unraid, didn't realize you could upload files to cheapies - my setup

              • ace310 on 18/08/2024 - 22:58

                @kiwijunglist: Nice. What sort of services you got. By the way no cache redundancy? I am sure you will have backups but still just curious.

        • Everettpsycho on 17/08/2024 - 20:36

          I'm about to start down this avenue soon. I've got an old optiplex tower with a i5 4570 inside that I used to have windows and Plex server on with a 4tb drive stuffed in to it. Considering stuffing it with multiple 2tb drives to build a raid 5 array and shifting to a NAS platform. I was looking at truenas but you make a case for unraid instead. Always been put off by both as they always seem harder than they need to be to get working.

          Work is offloading some dell desktops (the size between mini and tower) with 8th gen i7 cpus and Quadro gpus, I think I could try my hand at proxmox on one of those with the extra power. Thinking I can shove the old 4tb drive in there and have a clone of the nas on that single drive. Want to look at adding things like home assistant, a VPN server and would also move Plex server on to there but looking at the nas storage. Hello at the price they are selling them in considering getting two and looking in to a psu transplant to get a better gpu in to it.

          • ace310 on 17/08/2024 - 21:13

            @Everettpsycho: I have everything you mentioned and lots more on 8th gen i3 and N100 mini pc. For plex you don't need gpu either. Any intel 8th gen or higher with igpu should be able to handle almost everything on plex assuming you have plex pass for hw transcoding. Main reason for me to use unraid mix drive size, great app support and good ui to work with. Also the drives goes to sleep if not ised for a period of time. So less noise and less consumption. One of my drive is only for backups for apple devices so it like a month or 2, so other than that that just goes to sleep totally.

            • Everettpsycho on 17/08/2024 - 21:52

              @ace310: If I was getting two the second would be for light occasional gaming. I have an old pc with a 3570k and RX570. The CPU in that thing can barely handle downloads without defender grinding it to a halt so I just don't use it anymore. I'd want to transplant the PSU and GPU on to a more modern architecture, maybe even reuse the case as well. Going up to an 8th gen i7 will be a huge improvement. I'm very aware of dell and their proprietary power cables nonsense that means you can't just swap the thing out to a standard psu and theirs won't power anything needing an ATX connector.

              I'll do more homework in to unraid vs truenas. I have a couple of old 500gb drives kicking about that might be usable in unraid more than truenas.

              • ace310 on 17/08/2024 - 22:10

                @Everettpsycho: Setting up unraid and playing around is easy. Burn flash drive and boot it up with another hdd and you have the system ready. Experiment it and see how you like it. I am certain if you have different size disks, unraid is the best to combine all those drives.

                My current services on unraid. Have proxmox on n100 mini pc with Home assistant, plex, adguard on it. Planning to get another mini pc in near future to create proxmox cluster.

                • kiwijunglist on 18/08/2024 - 22:42

                  @ace310: Thanks for sharing what you are running. Given you are on choicecheapies you could consider running a container called jlesage/firefox and then add distill.io plugin to firefox so you can create price tracker alerts with an always running browser :)

                  • ace310 on 18/08/2024 - 22:55

                    @kiwijunglist: Thanks for the compliment and will look into it when I get some time. Currently busy with some smart home and HA optimization in free time.

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