There’s currently a sale on the Western Digital website. I was thinking of getting the Red Pros since they’re high capacity and relatively quiet. In a previous post I made on the datahoarders community, I was looking for an HDD that was basically silent since the NAS will be next to my desk where I WFH.
Currently, two 18 TB drives are going for $620 or about $17.22 per TB. Not the best deal but definitely better than their normal price. I know a lot of people like buying used drives but the ones for sale are usually loud enterprise edition drives which won’t work for me. Should I buy the drives now or wait until BF for a possibly better sale?
Honestly I’d recommend buying refurbished drives and using them in a RAID array so that you can easily replace one for cheap(ish) if it goes bad.
before anyone says “RAID is not a backup” yeah I know but you can’t deny its capability to function as such. 3-2-1 always applies.
Set up an alert for when the drive you want goes on sale/in stock
As someone who has worked in the it industry doing server work for 20+ years, definitely cannot agree with used drives. Always buy new if you can. Refurb drives are a huge risk whether or not they could have subsequent issues after being repaired. If you value your data, do not buy refurbs.
Edit - also consider most refurb drives are prob only a year warranty vs a probable 5 year on new WDs. To save a couple bucks, totally worth the extra warranty period.
I used to think that way too, then realized, who gives a fuk if using 321 backup method and have a cheaper spare on hand doesnt matter. Also this isnt enterprise, where i wouldnt even think about getting used.
Serverpartdeals is very reputable seller of refurb drives with low usage. Buy few in size you qant put them in a zfs or raid1 and move on with your life. However just make sure you have error chexking and drive tests on to find faulty drives and alerts you have tested working before you set it and forget it.
You can buy twice as many drives, though.
Also from the industry, can confirm.
well…its a hit or miss, i recently just got lucky with 2 16tb drives i got for 400, it probably came from a chinese chia server or some shit idk, but i did basic checks like SMART and they seem fine. I had my rx580 years ago also probably from a mining data center.
My logic and xp with these used “enterprise” stuff is that they are definitely used but not as abused like being OCed, etc. because they are optimized to run for a long time unless they are being decomissioned.
By Black Friday the US Dollar won’t be worth anything.
If you need something, buy it now.
WD has a recycling deal where you can get 15% off your total purchase, once per quarter, by sending in any drive, working or not, to their recycling partner. I just did this with an old Maxtor 60gb 3.5” PATA drive. The shipping is free and it gets processed really quickly (e.g. it was actually delivered today and i already received -and-used- the discount code.
Note that theyre pretty clear/strict about no stacking of codes/discounts.
Cool! I have some old drives laying around because I didn’t know how to recycle them.
That’s good to know omg
If you’re in the US prices are only going up, and the dollar is weakening. No better time to buy than now.
Thanks to everyone who replied. Majority of the responses were to buy now if in US (which I am). So I bit the bullet and just bought them.
I periodically keep tabs on new HDD prices in my area. Black Friday hasn’t had the same deep discounts it once did.
never wait for blacco Friday or any big advertised sale. guaranteed you will pay more, then just a 'we need to move product’s sale
Honestly with Electronics Presidents Day and Prime Days are usually the better deals (just not on Amazon). BF and Cyber Monday are inflated and discounted scams anymore
Didn’t WD screw some customers of their Red line with shady practices?
that was like four years ago unless I missed something.
Well, I’ve been known to hold a grudge.
same dude. I’ll never use Seagate ever again.
Black Friday is a decent deal if you’re buying a larger volume of drives. If you’re only planning on buying a few, you don’t have to wait for to. That being said, a ln unimpressive sale is better than no sale.
Have you checked serverpartdeals? They normally have good prices on refurbished and recertified drives
I checked them and GoHarddrive but they usually only have enterprise hard drives and like I said in my post, those would be too loud to sit right next to me.
I bought iron wolves off them and they aren’t loud. Sat in my synology for years next to me.
