As per the Austin deal prior, after finding out that one of my WD 4TB Red's just died, this couldn't have come at a more opportune time.
Looks to be the cheapest so far across eBay & stores etc.
Just ordered, says there are plenty left and they have sold quite a few.
… or just DIY your own using Xpenology on an old PC and save yourself $700+. Very easy!
That's also an option, i was going to get a microserver but then leaned towards the 918+ for no particular reason other than convenience.
For those ozbargainers who don't know what Xpenology is (I myself didnt know up until about 20 seconds ago) - heres a good explanation about what Xpenology is and does http://xpenology.org/xpenology-explained/
Ah yeah, sorry ;) Thanks for posting the link for those in a similar position!
I've been building Xpenology NAS boxes from old PCs for years and they're just brilliant! I usually use i5 based HP Z210 PCs that can be bought from ex-Govt resellers without a HDD or SSD (or OS!) for next to nix. They're fine for a 2 HDD NAS however my recent NAS builds have been based on HP Workstation grade machines like the Z420 & Z440 as they can handle 4 HDDs or more if required! They run crazy high powered Xeon CPUs too but to be honest even an i5 is over the top for most NAS processing so the Xeon is just silly. Fun though!
I'm a big fan of reusing old computer equipment but have you looked at the power costs of this?
One of the things you end up doing when you get solar+battery is starting to look pretty closely at the things that draw power over a long period of time in your house.
There's significant savings in using a NAS type device that has a very low power draw compared to a beefy PC.
Now if the PC is free or nearly free then I understand you can offset the cost of the gear against the cost to run it and still be ahead.. but it's worth thinking about.
I have 1-2 physical small desktop PCs at home that now stay off most of the time compared to the 4 bay NAS that runs 24x7..
@jason andrade: Yeah, looked into that (especially concerning when I was considering the Xeon based machine!) but it wasn't enough to make much of a difference for me so all good. From memory my tests of the Z440 with all four drives blazing consumed around 80W. Pretty sure the DS918 consumes half that BUT I think that's without any drives so it isn't a fair comparison.
That's not too bad. Just as a point of comparison/cost comparison:
80W works out to around 60c a day or $210 a year to run.
If you got the Z440 for free and paid $640 for 4 disks, your power bill is another $210 on top for a total of $750 in a year.
If you paid $750 for a DS918 and $640 for 4 disks you have paid $1390 and even assuming your power cost is 50% cheaper, that's $105 per year.
Over 5 years: $1690 vs $1915 - so you're better off by $225 in (re)using the old PC. However if you paid more than $225 then you're losing money in the power costs..
Oh that is cool.
Coming from a old Thecus NAS, DSM is seriously impressive.
@SteveAndBelle: I have an HP gen8 microserver. Can I use that for Xpenology? I bought that for streaming media but could not get it to work with Ubuntu, Freenas etc. I was wondering how easy would it be to get Xpenology on it
@VAA: Very easy to get Xpenology on most PCs. I used to run it on a Gen7 so can't see why it wouldn't work on a Gen8 however the CPU may struggle if you need it to transcode the stream first (as per PLEX to Chromecast) but if just streaming dumb audio & video files to other computers or say a SONOS mesh then yeah it'll be fine…. in fact that's the main reason I upgraded from a Microserver all those years ago. They're just not good enough to use for a PLEX/Chromecast based system.
@VAA:
What were you using to stream media? I havr a HP gen8 with Freenas running, but don't have anything like plex at this point…something to add down the track.
@timmehM: I have netgear readynas and use plex to stream on lg tv - half the time it does not work - buffering issue. The lg is connected through powerline network adapter
@SteveAndBelle: thank you. I bought the micro server after getting good reports on it but was unable to install free nas softwares.
@VAA: also look at Unraid. Super easy to use and free trial for 30 days. About $60 to purchase for life.
I've seen the ds 918+ for as low as $719 shipped, they are just new so may drop further. I don't think i will save $700 based on that figure but theres a saving to be had, no doubt. Is it worth the messing around though? not sure…
Worth the messing around? Most of my basic NAS builds have consisted of throwing the HDDs into the PC, running Xpenology off bootable USB and within about 30-60 minutes it's up and running! I highly recommend it, especially if you can get an appropriate PC for $50 or less because even if it doesn't work or you mess something up you can then still just go out and buy the fancy Synology box and just chuck the HDDs into it anyway. Not much to lose.
I did this on an ML10v2 with a HyperV host + XPenology as a guest OS
was a bit of a pain to get it all running and the HDD never spins down.
tbh if I had to do it all again, I would lean towards 918+ as well.
although if you don't go down the VM route it's probably pretty easy by just booting from a USB stick
Yeah, all my NAS boxes have been USB Boot, Bare Metal builds. Quick to throw together & setup and just keep working flawlessly.
@SteveAndBelle: hows the transcoding with your builds? mate wants a media server for cheap. I never had to do any transcoding on mine so have no clue. 918+ runs on celeron and they are advertising 2x 4k streams from memory.
@rexii2300: Yeah, never had a problem except when I used to run Xpenology on an HP Microserver with its crappy little AMD CPU many years ago. The moment I upgraded to a proper machine with a decent CPU (i5 and higher) PLEX transcoded out to Chromecasts simultaneously without a hitch!
@SteveAndBelle: ah ok. I was going to hunt for a cheap microserver due to the form factor. I guess then gen8 would work still, pitty there are no more deals anymore.
Bought my DS918+ from Computer Alliance as an upgrade from a hot/hungry/noisy Xpenology box. Now replacing the old drives with sweet deals like this…
Is it dead quiet? I want to put it in a bedroom but don't want to hear it.
Dead quiet - no. Quieter than the average enthusiast PC - yes. The fan is pretty quiet but you will obviously hear the drives when they're being accessed.
Now we just need them to lower the 8TB too :)
OP - how long did you have the WD red for? I would've assume a long time if you're considering getting another one…
This will give you interesting info on HDD reliability
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-stats-q2-2…
Bottom line is not enough data on the WD 4TB but so far, so good - HGST looks good.
How long does these last?
And for a 4 bay NAS, would you use SHR (Raid 5) or RAID 1?
People say Raid 5 is at risk, if one HDD dies, then the rebuilding process could cause another one to die, or get a read error etc, then you're at risk of losing everything.
Shouldn't matter because rule number one with any data storage is to always keep reliable multiple backups including one stored offsite!
Out of curiosity, who do you use for offsite storage, and what is the cost.
My NAS currently only has a 8TB WD Gold in it, with a small 750GB WD Black 2.5" also to backup the Photos which are the only important thing on the NAS.
I use myself! I have a holiday shack in another state and have a NAS there for data storage & media playback so just manually update it whenever I visit. Easy as that… but of course it'll cost you an extra mortgage ;)
Now to scour OzBargain for mortgage deals. LOL.
I was thinking just one of the free ones like OneDrive. But I think I only get 1TB for free.
Might look at CrashPlan
@AdosHouse: I've been investigating this myself lately since CrashPlan is out. At present I am using Idrive (no relation to Apple), but backblaze also looks reasonable.
I use OneDrive - I have an Office 365 subscription which includes 1TB of space - and Backblaze ($5 USD/month for unlimited but no Australian servers)
Both are supported natively in the Synology Cloud Backup app.
Raid 5 (and soon 6) is obsolete. I'd check out r/datahoarder, those guys have great knowledge on a whole host of modern storage tech (zfs/btrfs/unraid/anything you can think of)
Remember the 3-2-1 rule for anything remotely important though.
Are NAS drives fine to use just as regular storage drives on a PC?
Yes, but keep in mind that the WD Red is a 5400rpm drive. Would be a bit slow for general use. I'd be picking up a 7200rpm drive.
Go a WD Black if you can afford that.
Related to this deal, I picked up a 4tb Barracuda (5200rpm) for $139 (minus further CashRewards discount) from Computer Alliance last night.
Good for an everyday use drive, albeit a touch slow.
This is unrelated, but I'm thinking of building a PC primarily for software development. Like a Ryzen 1600, 512GB M2 SSD, 16GB Ram, etc. It's coming to about $1300 with this discount, but I'm trying to hold off until the new year.
Will stuff be at this price point in the new year, does everyone think? I know you can't predict the future.
The only things that are currently priced higher is graphic cards (due to crypto currency mining), ram (ram manufacturing shortage) and nand flash (ssd, similar to ram issue). These item prices should come down next year, as ram manufacturing plants are being built to meet demand and hopefully the crypto mining dies down.
Picked up a seagate 10tb nas drive for $430 yesterday, works out cheaper cent per gb and easily lets me store my blurays. Last cheapest deal was $410, so just $20 more.
Computer alliance removed the $15 postage, making the 10tb drive $421 now. Link below if anyone interested
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/10TB-Seagate-3-5-7200rpm-SATA-Ir…
stop it mate! I already have 50TB of hard drives, ah this is so good, I want it. Shut up and take my money
Good deal.
I've heard a lot of people have had these drives fail… seen it on whirlpool forums and personal experience working in I.T… obviously any drive can fail, but personally I'd suggest going for the seagate ironwolf nas drives…
WOW. out of the 180 3TB WD red nas drives, 171 failed.
Out of the 16 or so 3TB WD Red NAS drives I've owned for the last 5 years - zero failures, 1 broken by my own stupidity.
I'm about to buy another 8 - 3TB or 4TB.
I can't find any fault with them.
Couldn’t see where those figures came from, but those drives have been running for a long time and being in a data centre means they are being hammered 24/7.
Still I would go for HGST based on the Backblaze reports, but they are priced high.
I have had multiple Seagate and WD drives die on me- one and 2TB. I am looking at 3 dead Seagates on my desk now. The Samsung spinning drives I have had for more than 10 years are still going although one looks a little dodgy.
Trying Toshiba now.
Any cheap NAS / hdd drive bays to go with this?
QNAP TS-431P 4 Bay from shopping express any good?
oh wow $300? Wasn't expecting that kind of price range lol
Bought the 4tb drive and have to say great service from Computer Alliance. Got the drive next day in Melbourne.
Thanks for the deal.
Same here. Less than 24hrs to be delivered to Sydney. Very happy customer.
Hello! Taking a quick break from processing the current flood of orders and though I would provide a update…
We physically ran out of the 4TB late last night, but our purchasing guys ordered a large shipment today that should be in late Monday or latest Tuesday - so i have bumped them back up on eBay.
Price stays the same with free shipping.
Most of the first batch were shipped same day by overnight courier, as I see a few customers have noted! Orders over the weekend and Monday probably won't ship till Tuesday, but we will see what we can do. Depends when the new order turns up.
We also have some good deals on other WD Reds and various other HDDs… just check out the eBay store under storage.
…Adam
Thanks for keeping it at that price unlike some of the others participating in this promo. If you can do a deal on the synology ds918+ and pop it on ozbargain i'm sure you will sell a lot of those too. I'll definitely buy one.
Unfortunately not doing synology in volume at the moment and need to keep a reasonable margin on what we have in stock.
Perhaps in the future when we next do in large buy in.
Thanks for the reply anyway.
Bought on Saturday, received on Wedsneday which is good.
However this is the worst packaging I have ever received a HDD in - a satchel with thin bubble wrap was used instead of a proper box for protection.
Now i just need one of these guys to do a deal on the synology DS918+ and i'll take that. Computer Alliance hint :)