Tips on getting HDDs on the cheap?

[Laggger164]

I have a NAS server set up with the drives it came in (2 500GB Hitatchi drives in RAID 1) on which I store my VMs (there's more going on with it than just NAS things) and use the rest of the space for data.

 

I need more space for it, since as we all know, 500GB is not enough. 

 

Firstly, how would you go about this?

 

Secondly, do you have any tips on how to buy some harddrives on the cheap? It's a home NAS and archives will be dealt with differently (either I'll screw around with some LTO tapes or disc media, we'll see) so the harddrives, while I want to put them in RAID 5, they won't have to be "mission critical level of reliable". (Unless you have a different idea, if so then tell me)

 

How much data will I need? Well, 3TB to start with, maybe a bit more and some room for expansion.

 

I want to back up my personal computer (which has a 500GB HDD + 120GB OS SSD, that's how I know 500GB is nowhere near enough), another laptop with 500GB HDD, another one with a 1TB HDD and 2 other laptops with 200GB drives combined.

 

The 500GB HDDs are considered to be full and the 1TB one to be 750GB full (for now)

 

Then there are lots of VHS tapes that I will digitize and store on the harddrives and in the archive, photos and videos made by our family and so on so forth, pretty common cases.

 

Any help you can provide is appreciated and any questions will be answered!

Thank you!

[orangecat]

My advice for buying drives on the cheap is just spend lots of time looking for deals. Sometimes you'll find a HDD online for 40% off or something.

[Guest]

HDD's arent that expensive in the first place, 2TB are just 5-10 euro more than 1TB, so my advice hunt for deals for 2/3 TB HDDS. In my nas I have 2 usable TB of WD black, not sure for how much I bought them but I did hunt for them for a while.

[Enderman]

Don't buy used.

Just find good new ones on sale.

[JoostinOnline]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Don't buy used.

Just find good new ones on sale.

Can't stress this enough. Buying a used hard drive is a bad idea. You have no idea how long the person has used it, if they've  dropped it, or if it's been showing signs of failure. You've got no warranty on them either. 

[Bananasplit_00]

22 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Can't stress this enough. Buying a used hard drive is a bad idea. You have no idea how long the person has used it, if they've  dropped it, or if it's been showing signs of failure. You've got no warranty on them either. 

 

27 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Don't buy used.

Just find good new ones on sale.

its fine if you ask for SMART values and its not some shady ass place, i have gotten 1TB worth of drives for about the price of a single new one and all have been perfect

[SageOfSpice]

I'd agree with the sentiment of staying away from used drives. A lot of the drives I've received have had tens of thousands of hours on them already. While none of them have yet to fail, or show signs of failure, they could literally go at any time.

 

So you might save $40 or whatever, but realistically, that $40 is guaranteeing you a drive that works, and a drive that will work for the duration of the manufacturer's warranty, which is usually in the magnitude of 2-5 years.

[mthoward]

Well even though I would normally agree with the 2 guys above me. I have some drives I could sell you. I could plug them in and get their up time and test them. I have two 2TB drives and one 3TB drive. Let me know if you would be interested.

 

[Anghammarad]

just "shot" 4 4 tb seagate Ironwolf for around 425€ including taxes and shipping... should arrive today... 

If you are located in Europe, they are on Discount at Alternate right now.

[Enderman]

6 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

 

its fine if you ask for SMART values and its not some shady ass place, i have gotten 1TB worth of drives for about the price of a single new one and all have been perfect

SMART doesn't tell you anything about the probability of failure or if it has been dropped or used in high humidity or damaged in any way.

It just tells you the condition of the data platters.

[AshleyAshes]

If you're willing to through the warranty out the window, you can shuck external USB drives for their drives.  Lately I've been finding 8TB Baracuda Pro's inside Seagate's 8TB externals and I pay $179-$229 Canadian for them compared to the $350-$450 for an OEM 8TB Baracuda Pro

 

Disclaimer: These drives seem to be firmware modified to run at 5400rpm rather than 7200rpm.

 

[Bananasplit_00]

2 hours ago, Enderman said:

SMART doesn't tell you anything about the probability of failure or if it has been dropped or used in high humidity or damaged in any way.

It just tells you the condition of the data platters.

tells you the on time and what the drives condition is. sure, it dosent tell you a lot of things but good smart values and low on time disks should be fine

[mthoward]

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-8tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/5792401.p?skuId=5792401&ref=212&loc=DWA&ksid=7a8d0df8-5ebc-454e-b575-f3e9ca0e2ea5&ksprof_id=3&ksaffcode=pg269395&ksdevice=c&lsft=ref:212,loc:2&gclid=CjwKCAiA5OrTBRBlEiwAXXhT6OrRJux4BOf3Rhtuo2d_qlaTgF9pnp0s2E_PzSXOZkeKMkoLmVIgHhoCU10QAvD_BwE

 

8tb Wd Red drive for 159 US, can't beat that.

[Enderman]

1 hour ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

tells you the on time and what the drives condition is. sure, it dosent tell you a lot of things but good smart values and low on time disks should be fine

"fine"

Up to you if you want to risk your data like that.

I don't recommend it.

[Laggger164]

13 hours ago, Kilobytez95 said:

My advice for buying drives on the cheap is just spend lots of time looking for deals. Sometimes you'll find a HDD online for 40% off or something.

Seems like the best solution really, thank you!

13 hours ago, Konrad Kwasniewski said:

HDD's arent that expensive in the first place, 2TB are just 5-10 euro more than 1TB, so my advice hunt for deals for 2/3 TB HDDS. In my nas I have 2 usable TB of WD black, not sure for how much I bought them but I did hunt for them for a while.

Good point, so far the best Price/GB ratio seems to be on 4TB drives with 3TB being very close to em.

12 hours ago, Enderman said:

Don't buy used.

Just find good new ones on sale.

Yeah, used ones are a bit of a gamble. This isn't really a mission critical computer and the drives would be in RAID 5, so if one goes, I have time to react. More or less... I won't if another one goes.

12 hours ago, mthoward said:

Well even though I would normally agree with the 2 guys above me. I have some drives I could sell you. I could plug them in and get their up time and test them. I have two 2TB drives and one 3TB drive. Let me know if you would be interested.

 

Since you provide your location as Kentucky, I think you might be a bit far from Slovakia... thanks for the offer though!

12 hours ago, Anghammarad said:

just "shot" 4 4 tb seagate Ironwolf for around 425€ including taxes and shipping... should arrive today... 

If you are located in Europe, they are on Discount at Alternate right now.

Dayum. That's a bargain, but I've never heard of Alternate in Slovakia... will check it though.

4 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

If you're willing to through the warranty out the window, you can shuck external USB drives for their drives.  Lately I've been finding 8TB Baracuda Pro's inside Seagate's 8TB externals and I pay $179-$229 Canadian for them compared to the $350-$450 for an OEM 8TB Baracuda Pro

 

Disclaimer: These drives seem to be firmware modified to run at 5400rpm rather than 7200rpm.

 

Do you think these drives could be suitable for RAID? I know that WD Green and Seagate equivalent are not recommended to be used in RAID because of a lack of one function. Cant remember the name, but something about error checking.

 

Also, why is it that those drives are so much cheaper inside of the enclosure? Those are High-end drives too!

2 hours ago, mthoward said:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-8tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/5792401.p?skuId=5792401&ref=212&loc=DWA&ksid=7a8d0df8-5ebc-454e-b575-f3e9ca0e2ea5&ksprof_id=3&ksaffcode=pg269395&ksdevice=c&lsft=ref:212,loc:2&gclid=CjwKCAiA5OrTBRBlEiwAXXhT6OrRJux4BOf3Rhtuo2d_qlaTgF9pnp0s2E_PzSXOZkeKMkoLmVIgHhoCU10QAvD_BwE

 

8tb Wd Red drive for 159 US, can't beat that.

Yeah, only if I could buy it from there... and you searched that just to answer my question thank you!

 

Slovakia is far away from pretty much everything and I live in Eastern Slovakia, where there's even less than nothing around.

But I managed somehow to this day, I sure will manage this time!

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, Laggger164 said:

Do you think these drives could be suitable for RAID? I know that WD Green and Seagate equivalent are not recommended to be used in RAID because of a lack of one function. Cant remember the name, but something about error checking.

It's going to depend on your preferences.  Anyone who works for Segate or WD or something is going to tell you that you HAVE to use their fancy storage NAS drives or what have you because.... Mostly because they'll be fired if they say anything different.  If you were to say, ask them for actual tested MTBF between different drive models in different tasks, they won't have data that they will willingly provide you with.  (Not that I don't think it'd be better but it's a question of how MUCH better?

 

I use these drives in my FlexRAID setup and they're find.  Keeping in mind that trying to buy drives that won't fail is a fools erfand.  Any storage solution of data that is important at all needs a good backup policy or it's a waste of time and money either way.

[mthoward]

47 minutes ago, Laggger164 said:

Seems like the best solution really, thank you!

Good point, so far the best Price/GB ratio seems to be on 4TB drives with 3TB being very close to em.

Yeah, used ones are a bit of a gamble. This isn't really a mission critical computer and the drives would be in RAID 5, so if one goes, I have time to react. More or less... I won't if another one goes.

Since you provide your location as Kentucky, I think you might be a bit far from Slovakia... thanks for the offer though!

Dayum. That's a bargain, but I've never heard of Alternate in Slovakia... will check it though.

Do you think these drives could be suitable for RAID? I know that WD Green and Seagate equivalent are not recommended to be used in RAID because of a lack of one function. Cant remember the name, but something about error checking.

 

Also, why is it that those drives are so much cheaper inside of the enclosure? Those are High-end drives too!

Yeah, only if I could buy it from there... and you searched that just to answer my question thank you!

 

Slovakia is far away from pretty much everything and I live in Eastern Slovakia, where there's even less than nothing around.

But I managed somehow to this day, I sure will manage this time!

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STEB8000100/dp/B01HAPGEIE/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1518038612&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=8tb

 

Can you buy from Amazon? This is a still a really good deal.

 

The reason these drives are so cheap has a lot of factors but my best guess is that they manufacture the drives so that translates into lower costs and also the market is very saturated with external hdds driving the price even lower.

[OzzyC]

I highly suggest following data hoarder groups, they tend to be good about keeping an eye on the market for good deals as well as knowing which external enclosures run which HDDs internally and how bad they are or are not to open assuming you are not super worried about warranty