Should I buy now or wait?

MartinIAm · July 26, 2020

I want to buy 7 wd dc 4tb drives and I found them new or open box on ebay for a pretty good price. I'm wondering if I should buy a couple hard drives here and there and get a couple of good deals or if I should just wait and buy them all in bulk at once. I have about half a year of time to buy these hard drives so I'm not sure what I should do.

Tomthehitman · July 26, 2020

I mean it's up to you but storage seems to be dropping in price quite rapidly at the moment.

KyloHertz · August 9, 2020

I don't need as much storage, though it would be nice. But I am finding myself in the same position. $160 for 8TB is the value point I've been eyeing.

eBay's return policy has not been bad in my experience. As always, caveat emptor--your mileage may vary.

But I will tell you something good about buying drives at different times: they are far less likely to be from the same BIN, which is good for reliability overall. There's nothing worse than getting two (or more) brand new drives and having them both rapidly die. Looking at you, Seagate. I would have sworn them off, but I had a friend that was willing to recover my data. Plus, I miss buying old 100mHz PCs from their local warehouse for $25.

So my advice is to buy what you need immediately, but plan to stagger your drive upgrades and vendors, for reliability and savings!

I know it sucks to not have matching drives, but that can be a good thing! Besides, you're unlikely to see them much anyway. Especially with HDDs becoming more for archival use.