Office works have 3TB USB3 WD hard drives, just over $10 cheaper from the deal i posted last week for the 3TB USB3 Seagate from Aus Post. Ended up going to JB hi fi and they beat office works by $1.
Also check out Office works for WD My Book Studio Hard drive 4TB USB3 for $139.30 ( not available in a lot of stores but try your luck. I did however find availability at Officeworks ALBURY, FAIRY MEADOWS AND BALLARAT stores.) Good Luck!! :)
I called now and they are sold out.
Dang it.
Sorry that would be me. I rang and reserved at about 8.30am. Both sitting pretty in front of me right now.
So you replied to gloat?
Vic:
None at FTG
~20 at Bayswater (on Canterbury Rd near Dorset Rd)
They were up at the front desk not on the shelf.
Bayswater has been cleared out - none there today!
Fairy Meadow is my local store. Will suss it out later today.
Kew in VIC had 4 left on the shelf 15 minutes ago. I took one. Got to the counter, and a bloke in front of me had 10 of them! 10!!!
Now you know what Broden looks like
You can't count…(you need your eyes checked)
It was 9.. not ten….
I am picking up a secondhand Norco Server Chasis today
Was wondering how on each I was going to get some cheap drives to put in it..
Thank you OZbargain.
8 for raiding together and 1 spare for a failure..
You should have just brought all 15 from Kew, just to make other Ozbargainers sad :P
All 3 remaining at Box Hill South were bought this morning
Dammit!
Why everyone buys the stuff i want.
Is the included USB cable 3.0 or 2.0?
USB3
Good stuff! Sometimes companies pull shiftys on things like this.
About 10 avaialble from South Melbourne Officeworks
I rang South Melbourne about 1 hour ago and the guy said they were all gone.
Also JB Hifi Prahran refused to match OfficeWorks price and the best they were prepared to offer was $129
What connectivity does the drive has inside the enclosure?
Gone at Oxley, QLD.
Got last 2 from Wentworthville. There are a few behind the counter but all reserved.
Found a great vid on how to crack open this particular case in not-English but you will get the idea.
That made pretty easy in the end.
Just bought the second last one at Taren Pt.
Just got back from UNDERWOOD QLD
Bought my fill and there were at least a dozen left
Map link https://www.google.com.au/maps/search/officeworks+underwood/…
Just went and there's 3 left now (there were 4 being held behind the counter as I was paying though).
For anyone going they're not where the other hard drives are but instead under where the laptops are displayed.
there were 4 being held behind the counter as I was paying though
One was for me haha :P - there's none left on the shelf anyway.
Price matched at JB, no dramas. Thanks op :)
just picked last one up from North Sydney
I got 3 from the South Melbourne store as soon as they opened in the morning. I have opened one up after verifying that it worked ok and it is a WD Green inside - WD30EZRX manufactured on 14 July 2014.
I basically used a credit card to insert into the side with the connectors and moved it around till all clips came of, then simply slid the case off.
And it works OK in a PC without having to do anything?
Dont know yet. I am still collecting parts for my new HTPC build that these drives will go into.
I got mine price matched at my local JB Hi-Fi here in Townsville (same model number and everything) an hour ago, popped it open with my Swiss army knife and happened to find a red drive inside. Chucked it in my desktop, changed it from MBR to GPT and then I was good to go. Great deal.
Date of Manufacture & Made in China or Thailand ?
Date of Manufacture was provided in my earlier post above. They are Made in Thailand.
Awesome picked up from JB and looked closely to make sure I did not get the Made in Thailand ones as they are the WD Green drives inside. Got a Made in China and it indeed is a WD RED 3TB inside.
The drive alone is worth $156 :D
http://www.msy.com.au/viconline/pc-components/5174-wd-35-red…
Going to pick up a 2nd one tomorrow :D
@regenade: Oh no! I got a made in Thailand and Hard Disk Sentinel reports "Caviar Green" family! :(( I'm not gonna use it for NAS though. Just a backup beast.
@superforever
Made in Malaysia should be the Red Drive. Just check via HWInfo Application
It should be WD30EFRX (RED) and not WD30EZRX(Green). I picked up another from JB today and its again a WD RED :D
@regenade:
Price matched at my local JB HiFi (Waurn Ponds, VIC). Had product of Malaysia on the box & confirmed with HWinfo that it is a WD RED (WD30EFRX).
^^b
@regenade: Not sure why you got neg'd.. Both drives are "IntelliPower" - WD's speak for "yeah, it's a 5900RPM drive, but we don't want you to know that". It's certainly not a 7200RPM drive!
-delete- I mean I deleted my own post.
South Melbourne is now out of stock as I went to get one more.
Would have preferred one of the WD 2tb Portable but none available anywhere near me so got one of these instead. Purchased 1 at Mona Vale store. Still 1 left on shelf unpriced. Assume they could have more elsewhnere. Unless like others have reported they are all put aside and reserved for other people. Since they are still listed on the web site as In Stock at this store.
You can use free HWINFO utility to find out what model driver is inside the external hard drive without having to crack it open.
The one I picked up contains a WD30EZRX-00SPEB0 WD green 5,400rpm drive.
Price matched at JB hifi Top Ryde. Nearby Officeworks @ West Ryde was out of stock. Thanks OP
Did you check WD RED or WD GREEN inside, I have a feeling JB recent stock is all WD RED and OW is WD GREEN as they are a bit older models.
You can also check my connecting to computer and checking with programs like HD Tune or Smart Fan
Drive model is a WDC WD30EZRX-00SPEB0, 5400 RPM and made in Thailand. No idea it's red, green or pink. :)
I might have taken the last two. Bought around 10am. There was three on the shelf. The sales lady took one assuming to reserve it for someone.
Had $129 on the shelf but as i was about to say is the price… she finished my sentence that its $90.30.
OK, some slight confusion here.
I was under the impression that an MBR disk has a 2TB size limit.
From google
"2 TB
MBR partition entries and the MBR boot code used in commercial operating systems, however, are limited to 32 bits. Therefore, the maximum disk size supported on disks using 512-byte sectors (whether real or emulated) by the MBR partitioning scheme (without using non-standard methods) is limited to 2 TB."
How come when I spin this up it shows as NTFS, MBR and 2794.5GB in one partition?
both with Seagate and Western Digital the case does translation so it can format MBR and NTFS partitions greater than 2TB , that is why if you put it in your pc it cant be read, a bit like the bad old days with discmanager doing a work around to support larger drives than older motherboards can support, to do drives bigger than 2 TB you have to change the drive from MBR to GPT so windows will be able to create larger partitions, I recommend EASEUS partition manager for this purpose as it is free for private use. SO UNDERSTAND ANY DATA ON THE DRIVE IN THE EXTERNAL CASE CANNOT BE READ WHEN YOU PUT THE INTERNAL DRIVE IN YOUR PC DUE TO THE TRANSLATION
I'd be careful there, misinformation can be dangerous.. Couple of things;
- MBR at 512b sectors has a maximum of ~2TB
- MBR also supports 4kb sector drives though, which gives you ~10TB partition support
- However, you won't be able to boot from that - not an issue here though
Thanks OP! Got the last three from Newcastle.
Whoa! Two down votes? I sense some fellow Novocastrians weren't able to get their hands on any of these? Sorry guys. :)
picked up from JB parramatta heaps left there !!!(not on shelves , you have to ask)
Priced matched no issues no drama !!!
thanks OP
Heading there tomorrow to get some more. Thanks.
Can you confirm they matched OW's price?
Yup, showed my receipt from OW and they matched it.
Here you go. Got 2 from OW and 1 from JB HIFI.
http://i57.tinypic.com/68tw0y.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/ok8rxk.jpg
JB HiFi Moore Park (NSW) price matched without hesitation. Got two for $90 each. About half a dozen left…
Can you post receipt please?
Thanks!
I tried two officeworks yesterday morning, no joy. Then I tried JB Hifi and they wouldn't even get close to price matching.
No drive for me :-(
Thanks OP, for those interested in putting these in a NAS, there's a tool WDIDLE3 which can disable the idle spin down timer, effectively turning it into a red drive. It was a pain in the arse as the exe is 16bit, found a UBCD image withit preinstalled, however you need this drive connected to the sata bus and not managing to get it to work with some old garage desktops eventually got it working via an esata card on a laptop once the laptops drive was removed…
thanks for the info - any chance you can share the location of the UBCD image please? cheers!
thank you!
Thx OP. Got the last one at Strathpine store this arvo.
Bought from Officeworks Kotara, contained WDC WD30EZRX-00SPEB0 (Green 5400 RPM http://www.wdc.com/global/products/specs/?driveID=927&langua… )
I phoned Kotara on Friday night and they reckon they didn't have any in stock!
I asked them to check out the back?
Just a thought… my orifice-works one was a Green drive and came with a Green 3TB sticker on the box. Did any jb hi-fi price-matchers with a Red drive get a Red 3TB sticker on the box?
I can confirm that my red drive from JB Hi-Fi did not have a sticker on the packaging stating what drive was in the caddy.
How are the drives formatted out of the box? Is it 3 separate ntfs 1tbs? What format should I use to have a single 3tb partition on Windows?
By default out of the box they are formatted as 1 3TB NTFS partition (approx 2.7 TB) using MBR (Master Boot Record) not the more modern GPT (GUID Partition Table)
http://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats-the-difference-between…
So not really necessary to reformat it, right?
Just opened it and used crystal disk info checked it is formatted as 4096K.
Will have to delete the partition and reformat it, otherwise Windows will not be able to see it if plugged it in directly to SATA.
Windows will see it fine. Whether it's USB or SATA, it's the same partition..
No, Windows cannot see it with 4096k. I have just plugged it in to SATA. As others said on Page 1.
Inside your tower you no longer have the case doing the translation, so windows can only address the first 2 terabytes using MBR, so you must delete the MBR partition and create a GPT partition to then access the complete drive, I recently had to reverse the process as I wanted to take a 3TB drive with me on holidays so I transferred my files while the drive was in my tower then put the drive in an old seagate case …. then remembered OH THAT'S RIGHT because it translates all that copying I did was for nothing so re-partitioned it in the case then recopied the files via USB 3 so was tedious and took 2 to 3 times longer than internally on my SATA port, just for the exercise I did try formatting the drive while in the case to GPT but when I put it back in the tower windows still didn't recognize the partition due to translation, now if someone can find a driver layer to install in windows 7 on-wards it would mean we wouldn't have to reformat and re-partition, I recently had to copy some files on to a friends external drive that was mac formatted and I was able to find a driver layer
(Paragon HFS+ for Windows) I could install with 10 days trialware (I think) which allowed me to copy files to his drive without having to reformat it
@dydydy: So much no. The USB does nothing to the partition table.. If Windows can see it in the enclosure, but not in your PC, then you don't have 4k support on your PC hardware - check for firmware and driver updates.
@ryang:
like I keep saying the USB BRIDGE in the case does the translation (to allow sectors up to 4k) for windows that is how the external drive can fake a MBR partition or 3TB (or more), they do the same thing with the 4TB Seagate external drive, I have been dealing with this issue for around 2 years (same hard drive only difference when in or out of a pc or enclosure is the USB BRIDGE FIRMWARE (=translation)
I am wondering after I formatted with Windows if I put it back to the enclosure can Windows still see it?
@superforever: no that is the problem you format in pc or in enclosure but cant format for one then transfer to the other, hopefully there my be a driver solution out there but i haven't found it yet
Thanks doesn't matter I won't put the Red Drive back anyway.
But should be OK if I put another drive into the WD enclosure and format it with USB, right?
@superforever: don't know if its still the case, I found Western Digital enclosures will only accept Western Digital drives (due to the drive signature I assume) but you can put any brand of hard drive in a Seagate enclosure.
I am currently running a 3TB Western Digital drive in a Seagate 4TB enclosure quite happily and for the exercise I did format it there as GPT though I could have done as MBR instead (though due to the USB BRIDGE this drive formatted GPT is still different from the same same drive formatted GPT in a PC)
@dydydy: I never checked my first drive before putting it into the PC.
I could clearly see the drive in the bios but Win8 never found it in Disk Management.
I loaded up GParted as suggested earlier in the thread and it showed the drive as having what I think was 3 partitions (at least two MBR). Never took a note of it exactly.
I deleted these partition and created the GPT partition and something about EXT4, booted back to Win8 and there it was.
I have a second device that I've left as is and plugged it to the USB and its showing as one partition (MBR) at 2794.49GB.
I'm going to remove this from its casing and put it into the PC and see if I get the same result I saw the first one.
@superforever: tbh I have nfi except I couldnt proceed unless I made a change.
Anyway I now have access to the full size, partition is GPT and file system NTFS.
I've just plugged the 2nd USB HDD I got and loaded up GParted, its reading differently to what the 1st HDD did when I installed it to the PC without checking it via USB.
This new one still in its case via USB is showing up as one partition 2.73TiB NTFS.
As I mentioned before the 1st HDD showed 3 partitions and that was out of the box.
Mine only showed one partition NTFS but still need to change it to GPT before the PC can read it.
My hard drives out of the box were all preformatted as one NTFS 2.73tb partition using older MBR partition tables. All my old and new pcs running windows 7sp1 64 bit had no problem accessing them.
I'm planning on leaving them as is in the external case. Just wondering should I leave them as is or is a good idea to repartition them to GPR and reformat?
Hey the WD Elements Desktop 3TB External Hard Drive at JBHIFI is USB2.0?
https://www.jbhifi.com.au/computers-tablets/all-computers--t…
I bought from JB and it is exactly the same as the ones from officeworks.
Same bought one at JB, no problem after they checked in stock somewhere.
Just came back from JBHIFI. The cashier looked non too happy to price match but I got it for $90.30 (dunno how some got it for $89?). Yes it is exactly the same as Officeworks.
I have one on hold at Richmond, Victor ia for today under name Keerthi.
You are welcome :)
2 left in wentworthville in NSW at 830this morning, call and reserve yours, be quick.