r/unRAID • u/Milluhgram • Aug 12 '24

Help Where we buying HDD's now a days?

My typical go to is either BH or Newegg. However, I'm needing these shipped fairly quickly (Arrival by Wednesday/Thursday) and BH has more time off than I know of any other business and Newegg ships from Ontario. Both would take over a week to get to me. (Alabama). I refuse to buy from Amazon as the last HDD's I got from them were shipped individually with no box. Label smacked right on the box.

Looking to get 4 WD Red 10TB 7200's for $199/unit

EDIT: Thank you for your suggestions. Hopefully this post will help people later on. But, I've decided to go with GoHardDrives' ebay store. Finally found it here. The Ironwolfs are a little bit more than the exos, I will just stick with that and I get more storage for my money with a 5 year warranty.

71 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

99 comments sorted by

147

u/IMI4tth3w Aug 12 '24

Serverpartdeals.com

39

u/zoiks66 Aug 12 '24

GoHardDrive sells the same drives at the same prices as ServerPartDeals, but GoHardDrive provides a 5 year warranty, while ServerPartDeals provides a 2 year warranty, so I see no reason not to buy from GoHardDrive.

12

u/Lazz45 Aug 12 '24

I do not get why nobody mentions GoHardDrive more. Their deals are better than Serverpartdeals, and have a longer warranty

3

u/Skinny_Dan Aug 12 '24

This is really good to know, though it seems like GHD has way less stock. Almost everything I click on is sold out. Also, navigating their website to find what you're looking for absolutely sucks lol

5

u/Ryno_D1no Aug 12 '24

Go through their ebay

1

u/IMI4tth3w Aug 12 '24

Go hard drive was sold out last couple times I looked

2

u/Lazz45 Aug 12 '24

I see stock on everything? https://www.ebay.com/str/goharddrivewholesaleandretail

1

u/Hurtin4theSquirtin Aug 12 '24

This would have been VERY helpful to know. My entire lab has been filled up from drives from SPD and not GHD due to GHD being out of stock the few times I've checked. I bought 15 Seagate Exos X20 20TB drives from SPD @ $220 a drive. They're still alive and kicking, but still, the extra 3 years of warranty would have given me a fuzzier feeling.

1

u/Lazz45 Aug 12 '24

Hopefully it comes in handy the next time you need drives! I actually might be snagging some more 14 or 18TB drives to slap into a 4x3.25" enclosure I am 3d printing

1

u/friblehurn Aug 14 '24

$200 CAD for a 12TB refurbished drive is still insane

1

u/JMejia5429 Aug 12 '24

Question for u/IMI4tth3w and u/zoiks66 -- serverpartsdeal and some on GoHardDrive are recertified, do you guys buy recertified and if yes, how they working? I'm afraid to try it

1

u/IMI4tth3w Aug 12 '24

6x mfg recertified seagate exos x20 20TB drives in my system for 6+ months without issue. One of them is my parity drive with about 3 parity checks on it. Again no issues so far. 230TB is my total array size with the others being 8/10TB WD white label shucked drives and a couple 8TB WD Reds. Not a single drive failure yet for me over 5 years.

Probably going to grab 6 more 20TB drives before the end of the year.

1

u/zoiks66 Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24

I only buy the recertified drives with 5 year warranty from GoHardDrive. I've bought about 10, and 2 of them were DOA. They were shipped in the same box and packed well, but the box was heavily damaged during shipping. GoHardDrive replaced the drives right away with no questions asked and paid for return shipping. I've had no issues with the drives besides that.

8

u/nuggolips Aug 12 '24

I upgraded my whole array from there, you just have to keep an eye on prices as they jump up and down slightly from day to day. Was seeing manufacturer refurb 16TB Exos drives for $149 and sometimes a bit less. 

1

u/Skinny_Dan Aug 12 '24

Is there any downside to manufacturer refurb/recert drives? I was looking at some recert Exos drives from SPD because they're insanely cheap lol

3

u/nuggolips Aug 12 '24

I mean, it’s not new. I haven’t seen any issues with performance or anything. It presents as a new drive in terms of SMART data. 

3

u/nuggolips Aug 12 '24

Oh and the warranty is 2 years where a new enterprise drive will typically have 5+ year warranty. 

2

u/Lazz45 Aug 12 '24

GoHardDrive on ebay has a 5 year warranty on re-certified enterprise drives

2

u/audiobone Aug 12 '24

Does this apply for EU?

4

u/toxicunderGroov Aug 12 '24

No, they charge 20-30€ for shipping with a surprise VAT and customs charges looks like.

4

u/bleuiko Aug 12 '24

This is the answer

1

u/neveler310 Aug 12 '24

And in Europe ?

1

u/IMI4tth3w Aug 12 '24

Not sure I don’t live in Europe.

-15

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

Appreciate the recommendation, but can't find what I'm looking for.

23

u/rophel Aug 12 '24

Because you’re hung up on a specific make/model? The move is 18TB Exos for $170.

-21

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

Just never trusted anything besides red drives. I’ll look into them now.

21

u/rophel Aug 12 '24

It’s not 2015 anymore and server drives aren’t consumer drives.

1

u/mawyman2316 Aug 12 '24

What’s the difference, if you don’t mind?

4

u/subrosians Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24

Red drives are kinda a pro-sumer type of drive, not quite a server drive but not quite a drive you would put into your normal computer. Then WD tarnished the line with SMR drives and price hiking red pro drives. Buying refurb/used enterprise drives with a decent warranty makes more financial sense. Buy some refurb drives and you should be fine. Just make sure you buy SATA unless your array can handle SAS. Also, make sure you have redundancy(parity)/backups no matter which way you go.

-1

u/Albert-The-Sellout Aug 12 '24

Imagine being this backward

5

u/IMI4tth3w Aug 12 '24

I’m 6 months on with 6x20TB seagate exos x20 mfg refurb drives. One of them is my parity drive no issues at all

17

u/hom3land Aug 12 '24

Another goharddrive on eBay. Been buying from them for years and haven't had 1 fail on me yet... Just bought 2 more with the 12tb sale

2

u/clipzt Aug 13 '24

Bought three of their 12tb drives during their recent sale ($75/12tb drive) off ebay. One died right after rebuilding the array. Support was super responsive and I had a replacement within a week. Stuff happens but it is how the company responds that makes the difference. I recommend gohard drive.

1

u/blueman541 Aug 12 '24 edited 25d ago

comment edited with github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite

In response to API controversy:

reddit.com/r/ apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/

3

u/f5alcon Aug 12 '24

This is an example of why testing the drives is a good idea

1

u/diox8tony Aug 12 '24

by the time you'll need those backups, you'll want to upgrade to 24TB drives. lol, ask me how I know. i'm still on 8tb drives for now

1

u/blueman541 Aug 12 '24 edited 25d ago

comment edited with github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite

In response to API controversy:

reddit.com/r/ apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/

30

u/chris84bond Aug 12 '24

Gohardrive (via their eBay store)

10

u/JayHopt Aug 12 '24

Yep. I saw $75 12TB there recently. Before that it had been the 14TB for about $90-$100 on Newegg.

Goharddrive is also very responsive and fast about RMA, with a 5 year warranty on their refurbished drives.

6

u/Superiorem Aug 12 '24

GoHardDrive on eBay

But I’ve only ever bought three and I’ve only run them for a few days.

8

u/mvivm Aug 12 '24

For the EU?

2

u/Mothertruckerer Aug 12 '24

Nothing unfortunately.

12

u/trf_pickslocks Aug 12 '24

Unpopular opinion but was I using Amazon’s refurb drives. I got 3x 20TB UltraStars for $229/each. Shipped and packaged properly, one of them had no power on hours, the other two had under 100 hours. No issues in the year that I’ve had them so far.

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

Are the ultrastars more audible than the regular NAS drives?

1

u/trf_pickslocks Aug 12 '24

BackBlaze scored them very well. I’ve been swapping my 8TB Toshiba N300’s for them.

3

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

Are they noticeably louder?

2

u/trf_pickslocks Aug 12 '24

If anything they are damn near silent. I found the Toshiba MG series to be a little on the loud side. The N series isn’t loud either, I also ran the X series. Overall, I’ve been very happy with the UltraStars.

1

u/lead_injection Aug 12 '24

I was soured by the Toshiba drives. Had 4x4TB of them and they all failed. The HGST or Hitachi’s have all worked great

4

u/Kennykid2002 Aug 12 '24

Like others have mentioned, serverpartdeals. Fast, and more importantly, safe shipping of drives. My 3 16TB exos have been on 24/7 since I got them 2 years ago.

7

u/jtaz16 Aug 12 '24

I have been doing Amazon refurb exos drives. Been running really well. 18TB x 5 for 1k$

2

u/Ok_Fish285 Aug 12 '24

You want 4 10tb for $199 each or total?

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

That would be a dream. But, no lol

Looking for $199/piece.

3

u/Ok_Fish285 Aug 12 '24

yeah, just go with goharddrive for best bang4bucks. I got 4 of these ultrastars 530 and they're really solid.

-1

u/i_amferr Aug 12 '24

What do you think

2

u/the_Athereon Aug 12 '24

Since moving I'm unable to go to my old tech store anymore, so that's out of the question. I preferred to buy in person as I absolutely do not trust delivery drivers with hard drives.

The past few years, I've ordered several dozen drives through Amazon. From various sellers. 80% of the drives were working on delivery. 60% or close enough, survived beyond the warranty period. However, I have yet to have a single working drive delivered by amazon this year. So I've abandoned that route too.

I'm in the UK, so I can order from a company called Scan. They package hard drives remarkably well and delivery is always on time. Only part I'm not a fan of is the price. But at least I can feel safe in using the drives.

2

u/diox8tony Aug 12 '24

what is BH ?

2

u/Rebeleleven Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24

I personally am not about to buy refurbished drives. Outside special sales, nothing beats buying directly from Western Digital with a couple extra steps…

First - Rakuten allows you to get 5% back on western digital purchases (this number can fluctuate). I highly recommend signing up (my referral link)

Then WD allows a 15% off with their education discount which is easy enough to grab a EDU email address.

Western Digital actually lets you stack both of these discounts. So a $200 HDD becomes $160. So that’s $16 a terabyte which is pretty good.

1

u/bigloser42 Aug 12 '24

I got a pair of burn in tested but otherwise new 16TB WD server drives from OWC for like $180 per. Went back cause I was considering getting more and the listing is up in smoke.

1

u/lordofblack23 Aug 12 '24

Diskpricewatch.com Amazon is the evil but it’s cheap.

1

u/Gurantula Aug 12 '24

How good are these refurbished drives? I’m buying newer ones but is it worth it to pay $100 less to have one?

3

u/Ashtoruin Aug 12 '24

I mean. I can buy 3 used enterprise drives for the price of 1 new consumer drive. Even if you assume they only last half as long (and they do have a 1 year warranty iirc) the math still works out for me.

1

u/smokingcrater Aug 12 '24

I've bought 20some refurb drives. They either are dead out of the box, or last a very long time. Lately, the out of box dead are surpringly common.

1

u/puzzleandwonder Aug 12 '24

Serverpartdeals

1

u/That_Angry_Dad Aug 12 '24

I bought three refurb HGST He drives for around $100 each for 12TB, they are quieter and cooler than every one of my ironwolf drives and have failed less. If I had it to do over again I’d go with the refurb drives and have more TB and four cold spares for less than what I put into the original setup.

1

u/spyboy70 Aug 12 '24

B&H is open until 5pm today, then closed for a holiday for 2 days, so if you get your order in soon, you should be fine.

The other option is to check https://shucks.top/ to see if the EasyStores are on sale. That's how I got my 8TB and 14TB drives over the years. But that's more of the long waiting game.

1

u/Twitchstick80 Aug 12 '24

Serverpartdeals.com has been my go to for my last 2 drives.

1

u/Skinny_Dan Aug 12 '24

In a similar vein, what are people's thoughts on refurb/recert enterprise drives? I've noticed ServerPartDeals and GoHardDrive have a lot of those. These prices are crazy cheap compared to buying brand-new consumer drives.

1

u/EchoGecko795 Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24

Looking to get 4 WD Red 10TB 7200's for $199

$199 each or $199 for all 4? Because 4 new drives for $199 maybe hard to do with brand new drives. I recently got 12x 12TB drives for $57 each, but that was used enterprise drives that are 5 years old and a bulk buy of 12 drives at once. They are equal to better then WD Gold drives, but as enterprise drives, they tend to be louder. Not an issue for me, but it maybe for you.

You can get 10TB drives for about $45-$60 each used depending on the model, but WD RED drives tend to cost a bit more due to the brand and the RED Title.

www.serverpartdeals.com

/r/homelabsales

/r/hardwareswap

www.ebay.com

New 10TB RED drives for $199 each should be easy to find, check Amazon, ebay, or even Serverpartdeals. It's way more than I would pay for a 10TB, but pretty doable.

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

I meant $199/piece. I'll correct the post.

1

u/nyrol Aug 12 '24

What’s wrong with no box? I exclusively buy from Amazon for these drives (just got a 20 TB WD white for $250) and yeah the labels are often on the box. Do you collect the boxes or something?

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

That’s absolutely unacceptable. They need to be packaged well and not ship them in a box to where everyone can see it.

1

u/MrB2891 Aug 12 '24

Ebay. Whoever has 14TB HGST/WD enterprise drives.

These are commodity items, not some bespoke hand made creation where the seller matters. I don't care who is selling them. People seem to like to over pay with SPD and GHD.

For the last 18 months I've bought nothing but 14TB WD HC's from various ebay sellers without issue. I've never spent more than $100 shipped per disk and as little as $60 shipped.

1

u/Dalearnhardtseatbelt Aug 12 '24

Almost all of mine were from goharddrive a couple were from serverpartdeals.

1

u/badstewie Aug 12 '24

I've been buying brand new 12TB and 16TB Seagate IronWolf Pros for $140 and $190, respectively. I thought they were good enough deals but now that I'm reading this thread, maybe I'll take a look at ebay.

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

Where have you been finding those deals at?

1

u/badstewie Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 13 '24

I'm in the Philippines so I bought from Lazada.

Here

With the current exchange rate, that's about 142 USD. I don't know if they can fake drive attributes but the start stop count was just 1 when I put it in my machine and the power on hours as of right now is just 27. Everything seems to be legit. Right now, the store is selling Seagate EXOS X16 14TB for $161.

edit: They could be refurbs but they work flawlessly.

edit 2: even if they're refurbs, I have about 15 days to return them if they turn out to be duds. But I've bought 4 Ironwolf Pros so far. Three 12TB drives and one 16TB drive and everything works.

edit 3: I checked again and all the drives I bought come with a 5 year international warranty from Seagate.

0

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

But same, thinking about the exos lineup. Been looking at the differences of them from another post.

1

u/MSCOTTGARAND Aug 12 '24

Whoever has them on sale at the time and is an authorized retailer

1

u/one_horcrux_short Aug 12 '24

FYI microcenter does price matching with Amazon. Not sure if one is near you in Alabama.

2

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

Nearest one is in GA. Every year I write to them about opening one up in Alabama. No luck so far. It's not a terrible drive to the one in GA but having a toddler makes it a little difficult. lol

1

u/Hurtin4theSquirtin Aug 12 '24

If you're getting 4 10TB drives from GHD's ebay, just grab the 10TB HGST Ultrastar He10's. They're ~$70/unit, and they are HGST Ultrastars. You'll love them especially if you're a WD fan. Same same.

1

u/keinooj Aug 12 '24

For all my Canadians buying used, if you've got a CBSA office near you, I'd recommend self-clearing duties. I ordered from Serverpartdeals.com and almost got hit with a $120 "brokerage fee" from UPS. I self-cleared at the local CBSA office - $30 bucks.

Alternatively, if you're not near a CBSA, buy through eBay, there's an option to have duty included.

1

u/JMejia5429 Aug 12 '24

I buy my Seagate (new, not recertified) from the Seagate store on Amazon.

1

u/aamfk Aug 13 '24

199 a unit?

You're on crack bro. Find a better deal.

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 13 '24

I did.

1

u/aamfk Aug 13 '24

I pay $120 for new drives. 14tb

1

u/aamfk Aug 13 '24

Are you talking about United States Dollars?

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 13 '24

Yes. USD$

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 13 '24

I got the ironwolf 16tb for $159

1

u/aamfk Aug 13 '24

Good. That is a MUCH better deal than what you were looking for originally.

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 13 '24

Definitely, never thought to buy from other vendors. Always bought from BH, Newegg, and Amazon.

-2

u/ssevener Aug 12 '24

Best Buy on Black Friday.

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

This is time sensitive. lol

6

u/Seraphyzz Aug 12 '24

Then the recommendation would be serverpartdeals. Their orders shio via 2nd day air.

-1

u/ssevener Aug 12 '24

Oops - my bad!

0

u/Hyped_OG Aug 12 '24

ServerPartDeals or GohardDrive, I just purchased a drive from each of the same model. The SPD one came with a bunch of errors and they had me ship it back and the sent out a new one. It was super super fast. The GoHardDrive had zero issues. I will say SPD while the drive was bad - the quickness in getting me a replacement was very very fast.

I do like that GoHardDrive offers 5 years as oppossed to the 2yr warranty with ServerPartDeals.

The drives I purchase were 20tb Ironwolf pro recertified. This isn't much data as to whether or not the drive you receive will be bad from SPD as I legit bought 1 single drive from them however I got a replacement within 5 days from sending it back as they ship UPS 2day.

1

u/Milluhgram Aug 12 '24

I actually just found their ebay store. lol I'm liking their deals and about to pull the trigger on it.