HDD prices rising

Man am I glad I invested in LTO3 gear :) I'd got a bit lazy and had a few TB of stuff laying around on disks but alas my 10 pack of tapes arrived last week and I am the proud owner of 3TB of lightly used free disk space. 4TB of tapes for $160 seems like a pretty good deal now :)
 
TerraPhantm said:
Perfect. Just as one of my caviar blacks seems to be ready to crap out (dropped from my array earlier. Rebuilt array with seemingly no issues, but I'm probably on borrowed time). Guess I'll have to hope I can convince WD to send me another TLER capable drive if/when this thing craps out and I warranty it.
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Hi, I went through some issues this year with replacing green drives. I started out two years ago with four matching WD15EADS drives. A year later, one failed and they replaced it with the same model. A couple months after that, one failed, and was replaced with a WD20EARS drive. Cool, an extra 500GB, right? Well, I was using them in software RAID under ESX (striped VMDKs), and that was a disaster. First, the replacement drive was DOA, so they sent me another WD20EARS. Among the other drives, I lost track of the number of drives I went through, but by July I had three different model numbers out of four drives... 1xWD20EARS, 1xWD15EARS, and 2xWD15EADS. Needless to say this was a mess. I tried everything including partition alignment, RDMs, using the drives in a base Linux MDADM configuration, etc. So I thought I'd RMA the two remaining EADS drives (since one had died) and they'd send me EARS drives, at least I'd have four advanced format drives which would surely work... no... the last two drives were replaced with the same model - EADS. :( I finally emailed them after probably the fifth replacement of the 2TB drive and just asked them if there was a way I could have matching drives... I didn't care if they ended up being 4x1.5TB EADS drives, I just needed something to work. They mentioned to me that if you RMA a drive and you need it to match other drives, they will gladly ensure you get the same model number as a replacement. So they offerred to replace all four of my drives with 2TB green drives, which would've been great, except they had already shipped me a 2TB black to replace the most recently-failed 2TB green drive (which is why I contacted them - the black drive would've added to my pain with three green drives). WD support was awesome, they RMA-ed all my drives and I now have four 2TB black drives. WD really made this one right. This was *just* before the flooding started, but I am sure that if you have a failed drive of a certain model and you call them and just ask if they can ensure you get the same model, they will do their best to ensure you get the same model.

Good luck...

Mike
 
I can see it now:

"Order your new iMac with a massive 2tb drive for an additional $1299"
 
I'm just glad I have a few spare drives in case of failures... and with 2TB free on my main raid, I wont need to add space for a while. The bulk of my current usage is VMs (preallocated) and backups. But now that it's established, it does not really grow that much more. I have p2p stuff like movies and music, but if ever I'm actually in a disk space crisis, that just gets moved to the archive SAN, or even deleted, and no backups. Not that important.

I just wish I had taken more advantage of the cheap hard drives and bought more.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I'm just glad I have a few spare drives in case of failures... and with 2TB free on my main raid, I wont need to add space for a while. The bulk of my current usage is VMs (preallocated) and backups. But now that it's established, it does not really grow that much more. I have p2p stuff like movies and music, but if ever I'm actually in a disk space crisis, that just gets moved to the archive SAN, or even deleted, and no backups. Not that important.

I just wish I had taken more advantage of the cheap hard drives and bought more.
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I'm currently buying up Seagate GoFlex 3TBs for between $150-$230 to rip out the Barracuda XT inside. I've bought 8 and am going to get 20 in all. Make 4 x 4 drive RAID-Z2 with 2 hot spares and keep 2 as external drives to backup important data. When the prices come down I'll stock up on 24 3TB SAS drives and reorganize the existing 20 into a 19 drive RAID-Z3 (16+3) with hot spare.
Point being, there are still deals to be had :)
 
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Beta4Me said:
I'm currently buying up Seagate GoFlex 3TBs for between $150-$230 to rip out the Barracuda XT inside. I've bought 8 and am going to get 20 in all. Make 4 x 4 drive RAID-Z2 with 2 hot spares and keep 2 as external drives to backup important data. When the prices come down I'll stock up on 24 3TB SAS drives am reorganize the existing 20 into a 19 drive RAID-Z3 (16+3) with hot spare.
Point being, there are still deals to be had :)
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ORLY?! what model exactly :confused:
 
can someone explain something about the whole 4K thing to me?

Samsung F4s are 4k drives with 512byte emulation, But what about other drives? Do all drives have the emulation, or are some just straight up 4k native?

And what if I mix 4k and 512byte drives in ZFS (using napp-it)??? Unadvised?
 
dmo580 said:
can someone explain something about the whole 4K thing to me?

Samsung F4s are 4k drives with 512byte emulation, But what about other drives? Do all drives have the emulation, or are some just straight up 4k native?

And what if I mix 4k and 512byte drives in ZFS (using napp-it)??? Unadvised?
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this has been discussed a lot in the forums, especially in regard to samsung & hitachi drives. correct me if i'm wrong, anything over 2GB will use 4K clusters, how they are dealt with (native 4K, 512b emulation) don't know.

i had a similar concern when updating drives for my (now unsupported) thecus 5 port NAS(s). i was sure 4K drives were gonna give a massive performance penalty due to being mis-aligned. so went with hitachi 2GB 5K3000 drives (low power, low RPM drive) as they were only cheap RAID'able HD left on the market.

side note, going to miss hitachi after WD is done absorbing them.

dunno about mixing 4K & 512b drives.
 
Beta4Me said:
If I said that then you might buy up the ones I want :p Haha! STAC3000102...check it out :)
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Hehehe, I did the same thing and got a bunch of those in raidz2 in my zfs array as well... They are FAST. After cracking the first one open I was able to do the rest without destroying the clips.
 
Can anyone post specifically which HDD model is inside of the STAC3000102?

And also maybe how to open the case without breaking anything?

Thanks.
 
Beta4Me said:
I'm currently buying up Seagate GoFlex 3TBs for between $150-$230 to rip out the Barracuda XT inside. I've bought 8 and am going to get 20 in all. Make 4 x 4 drive RAID-Z2 with 2 hot spares and keep 2 as external drives to backup important data. When the prices come down I'll stock up on 24 3TB SAS drives and reorganize the existing 20 into a 19 drive RAID-Z3 (16+3) with hot spare.
Point being, there are still deals to be had :)
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Strange plan. 6TB backuped up out of 24. Or do you need the performance ?

If not, what about a single 11 drives RAIDZ3 that gives you the same 24 TB, and you can backup all the data on 8 drives, and keep one on the shelf ?
 
Finally, now people can stop gouging their measly <250GB hard drives.
 
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I still think it's going to be many months before prices are back to where they were before Oct of last year. Last week Seagate released their earnings and IIRC the CEO stated he expected higher prices for all of 2012. They're going to milk this for all it's worth.
 
Shane_c82 said:
I still think it's going to be many months before prices are back to where they were before Oct of last year. Last week Seagate released their earnings and IIRC the CEO stated he expected higher prices for all of 2012. They're going to milk this for all it's worth.
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I guess only those who absolutely have to have new storage are buying drives these days. I suppose that the inflated prices are keeping the profits stable.

That sucks for me, because I was buying drives for non-critical stuff (media server) and obviously I'm not going to keep doing that at these prices. It also means I'll slow down on Blu-ray purchases too.
 
I've been looking at prices and they have come down quite a bit in the past few weeks. It's now possible to buy a hard drive in Canada for under 200 bucks!
 
WD20EARX is now less than double of previous price (bought 4 for 75e before the floodings, now they are at ~135 euros).
 
$105 for 2TB Hitachi, WD Caviar and Seagate SATA3 drives here, the prices are slowly dropping but not as good as the original $89 for 2TB specials before the floods.
 
Matthew Kane said:
$105 for 2TB Hitachi, WD Caviar and Seagate SATA3 drives here, the prices are slowly dropping but not as good as the original $89 for 2TB specials before the floods.
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$89 vs $105 sounds good to me; €75 vs €135 not so much :). For the same stuff (2TB Green drive).
 
Keep in mind thats a GREEN drive for that price...

I used to buy the WD Blue Drive, 250GB for about $44.99 right now its $84.99

So hey its definitly coming down, the blue drive was up over $100 when the floods first happened
 
Adam said:
Keep in mind thats a GREEN drive for that price...

I used to buy the WD Blue Drive, 250GB for about $44.99 right now its $84.99

So hey its definitly coming down, the blue drive was up over $100 when the floods first happened
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Slowly but surely :)
 
maxm said:
That's a good deal, is it available online?
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Nah just from the local computer store I work at, if I bought some it would only cost me $90 or so as staff get discounts. I'm waiting for the WD Black prices to drop down a bit.
 
dashpuppy said:
Slowly but surely :)
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I think that last 10-20% drop is going to take a while (Q4 2012). While supply is increasing, there is still a pent up demand which will keep inventory low. HDD pricing appears very strongly set by world inventory which is still "low" by all reasonable standards.
 
Folks,
Also keep in mind that there has been big time consolidation in the industry with both Hitachi and Samsung selling out to WD/Seagate respectively. So there are very few vendors. Apart from the higher prices now, they have also started cutting down on the length of the warranty big time..

So very likely the wholesale prices will go up. The Seagate CEO was quoted in this thread that he is offering pricing 20-30% higher to his big OEM partners who are coming up for renewal. With just two big players, it is much easier to establish a floor on pricing, especially since the bulk of the investment/action is now in the solid state space.

So I doubt that prices will truly come down to the pre-flood levels even when supply returns to normal levels.
 
breadtk said:
I just started taking a look at building a NAS and dear lord I never realized how much prices have raised. I would have assumed a 2TB drive would be around $79 by now... I guess my little project will have to wait a little longer.
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lol $79 for a 2TB is a pipe dream even before the flood. Well, I guess in the states everything is cheaper so maybe it's probable. But they were still closer to the $200 range here.
 
aviat72 said:
Folks,
Also keep in mind that there has been big time consolidation in the industry with both Hitachi and Samsung selling out to WD/Seagate respectively. So there are very few vendors. Apart from the higher prices now, they have also started cutting down on the length of the warranty big time..

So very likely the wholesale prices will go up. The Seagate CEO was quoted in this thread that he is offering pricing 20-30% higher to his big OEM partners who are coming up for renewal. With just two big players, it is much easier to establish a floor on pricing, especially since the bulk of the investment/action is now in the solid state space.

So I doubt that prices will truly come down to the pre-flood levels even when supply returns to normal levels.
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Very well pointed out. Going from 4 major companies to 2 of them selling off the other 2. I honestly don't expect such great pricing in general anymore , less competition is always worse for the consumer.

This sucks :(
 
Red Squirrel said:
lol $79 for a 2TB is a pipe dream even before the flood. Well, I guess in the states everything is cheaper so maybe it's probable. But they were still closer to the $200 range here.
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I got a few 2TB 5900rpm seagate LP drives for ~$69/drive at microcenter just before the prices shot sky high. now the darn thing is sitting at $179! :mad:
 
Last summer I paid less than $70 delivered for my 2 (3?) hitachi 5K.3000 drives and I believe 1 Samsung F4.
 
I am just hoping by Windows 8 prices are back down to pre-flood prices. I want to do a nice build with a large storage pool especially if it turns out to work as well as DE in WHS.
 
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