Was randomly looking around and saw this - looks to be the cheapest it has been in a while.
update: okay may be the cheapest in a very short while.
CamelCamelCamel.
How is it noise wise?
Very noisy to be honest
Mine is whisper quiet, although it is the North American model WDBWLG0180HBK-NESN , it should operate identically with this UK/EU model.
The only real difference is the supplied AC power cable/plug set. With the UK/EU models they are usually supplied with the full international plug adapters while the US models aren't.
This is a good price. I paid $528.17 for the US model during the Amazon Black Friday sale. It has been running without any issues. Would recommend. I keep mine running for mirrored backup of drive images created by Acronis.
My two are very noisy, to the point where I am considering changing up where they live so they don't disturb as easily.
Apparently was $434 back on March 23rd last year, so your price was pretty good!
…Also, only a month to go before we might hit low again!
Also go $25 cashback on shopback on that price
Got this 18TB last Nov for $449.79.
Mine arrived DOA, I had to get it refunded.
I got sent a 10TB drive with an Amazon 18TB bar code scanned on the bottom…
(the WD packaging was even clearly 10TB at the top, too…)
I had the exact same issue with the one I bought on black friday, 10tb box with 18tb barcode..
good memory!
I bought one too and it arrived in a plastic bag that was crushed and had water inside!
Very disappointing. I ended up getting a refund and a credit to buy another at the same price.
Fantastic deal! Very hard to find any storage less than $30 per TB. According to google it has a 7200 rpm helium filled NAS drive inside. I have not found anything similar for less than $33 per TB.
Pretty good price.
https://diskprices.com/?locale=au&condition=new,used&disk_ty… is a good link to check if you're ever in the market for drives.
Thank you
bought 2 of these for $940, shucked 1 for active backup and 1 as offline backup
Do you need any modification after shucking for it to go into a Synology?
Nope, they're just regular 3.5" drives inside.
I thought you need to do some pin modification. Do you know what models require pin modification so that I can avoid those?
@Rakibul: no pin mod needed for Synology - I have 4 14Tb and 4 10Tb shucked Elements Drives in a DS918+ and DS416. Best piece of advice if you want to shuck them, get a stiff guitar pick to use to run around the edge to pop the inside clips, works better than a creditcard as is thinner, and stiffer.
I got two of these via Amazon AU last year. One from Amazon UK and one from Amazon US and they both required the the 3.3v pin mod.
@Rakibul: Some drive caddys / NAS' like Synology / hotswap bays don't use the 3v pin so wont need the mod.
If you're plugging straight in to your psu's sata cable you will need the mod.
@Rakibul: I've got a Synology DS920+ and shucked 2 10TB WD elements like these, and a 20TB WD MyBook, to put inside it. No modifications needed, they're just plug and play.
Looks like WDBWLG0180HBK-NESN is a CMR dive so should be good for Synology (I have 2 x Synology NAS)
Just beware, it might not be a WDBWLG0180HBK-NESN.
And maybe WD lie about it being CMR and its SMR instead which is really bad and you will find about that many months later after buying it. See my post below.
depends on the Synology - newer models will complain if you're using a 'sanctioned' hdd.
If you are shucking, just message this ebay seller on skype and get it for $460 and you are guaranteed to get a 7200rpm HC550 instead of 5500rpm firmware locked drive. It comes with seller warranty as well vs no warranty.
Shipping just takes 3-4 days
"this" ebay seller, he says.
Hey, it's Internet Explorer, it's just taking some time to load the information for you 🤣
Sorry, I forgot to paste the link. I was using Internet Explorer afterall
It comes with seller warranty as well vs no warranty.
So, no warranty vs no warranty?
Someone from that group buy thread is initiating a warranty return and it looks good so far.
Seller warranty is better than 0 warranty after shucking
What if I don't want a 7200rpm drive due to noise/heat/power/reliability?
buy a different unit?
Which? It seems there are no shuckable 18tb 5400s.
Hey is this good for PS5 game storage?
PS5 has a 8TB maximum capacity with external drives.
Ok, thanks I didn't know that. Any hard drive recommendations for PS5 I should keep an eye out for?
I'm using a 8TB Elements drive with mine to play my PS4 games, Any drive 8TB and under will work fine.
@GoonSack69: I've been having major dramas with my external storage on the PS5 recently. It fried my seagate 2tb (although was using that on the PS4 the last 5 odd years), just bought a WD 4TB game drive and it's not recognising it after a week. Bought a HDD to usb C cable and it worked for 2 days and crapped itself again. Any tips would be most welcome if anyone has come across external HD dramas on the PS5
@HeihachiMishima: I've had my hard drive plugged in since launch and haven't had any issues. Maybe try using a hard drive that uses a power supply.
no there's a 8tb cap. however if you don't mind buying another one and replugging it in every time, you can have two.
Otherwise get an m.2 ssd
18TB. That is impressive.
Think Seagate's got a 20TB out, LTT built a Petabyte server out of them, to store all his "Linus ISOs" :)
I would have thought the prices would have come down by now. no one is buying for CHIA.
Chia farming is not a bad option at these prices. Earn nearly $20/mth at current prices and difficulty, so pay for the drive in just over 2 years and then 100% profit. The whole point of Chia is the minimal electricity usage compared to crypto mining, so ongoing costs of farming are almost nil.
My spare space in an array, as of the last week, earns 2cents per TiB per day.
Over 365 days that is US$6.67 per TiB per year. I can't remember what the usable space on this drive is, 16TiB or so, which would be about US$100 per year for a single disk.
Hardly worth the effort after accounting for electricity, depreciation and time.
Of course, it's money for nothing if you devote spare space to Chia and your computer would be on anyway.
@errorius: Yes- but you need to buy about $1000 of RAM. Profitable farming at present likely means keeping costs down. Also, the 'kill your SSD' thing was a bit of a media beat-up. A consumer-grade Samsung 1TB SSD is good for about 1200 TBW (warranty is for half of that), so you need to be going for a $2000+ farm to actually kill an SSD.
I literally just received my refund for the faulty one I received from the previous deal around three months ago. Dead on arrival
Same, added my experience below.
For those of you who want to shuck these and put in a NAS, BEWARE probably not the best option.
Speaking from personal experience, I ended up buying many of these drives to populate my NAS believing the WD red drives to be NAS drives. Only to find out many months later that WD Red drives were SMR drives which is not a great technology for raid drives.
For those reading this that are not tech savvy, WD and Seagate and possibly others lied to consumers about the tech specs about their drives.
So much so, that a class action was lodged and was successful. (~$10 compensation per drive - bugger all money for me though)
SMR drives are inferior for a lot of reasons.
In hindsight, I wouldnt buy again.
Warranty issues, technology issues
Buy at least from aussie seller, so at least you can return and get warranty claims..
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/if-you-purchased-a-…
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/seaga…
These are CMR drives.
thats what wd said before i bought them 2 years ago, then found out they are not cmr. they are liars
Have you thoroughly tested one to confirm it is SMR?
From what I understand, everything in the 10tb-18tb range is essentially guaranteed CMR. Western Digital simply don't make SMR models in those ranges.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15878/western-digital-cleans-…
@idjces: The WD Ultrastar HC650 is 20TB and is SMR.
https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library…
This same priced deal almost was around October/November 2021, the drive arrived DOA and because its from Amazon UK via AU, only possible to send in for refund, no replacement option available and it took me 2 months or so of nagging and chasing to get my money back.
Sure fingers crossed hope you get a good one, but buyers beware.
Are HDD's safe to buy over the internet especially being shipped from overseas? I'm worried all the bumps during the transit may cause hardware failure.
all drives come from overseas
These are as safe as any, they’re mounted on rubber inside a case which is in an egg crate style plastic package.
A % may fail same as drives purchased anywhere. Just give it a decent test after arrival and have backups. Personally the extra potential warranty hassle is worth it for the savings but YMMV.
I feel if you’re going to spend over $500 to get a white drive from shucking, you may as well spend a little more for the Iron Wolf Pro 18TB at $577.86 from Amazon UK (ST18000NE000). Yes it costs more but at least you know what you’re getting for a relatively small increase (vs other shucking drives relative to bare NAS drives).
Or for $504 AUD you can get Seagate Exos X18 18TB Enterprise HDD - CMR 3.5 Inch Hyperscale SATA 6Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 512e and 4Kn FastFormat direct from Amazon US.
https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-ST18000NM000J-Internal-Survei…
It works out to be $AU536 for one drive if I purchased three drives (inclusive of shipping and GST).
How did you get $AU504 price?
Would Amazon provide the warranty should the drive fail within the 5 year period? Would they pay for return shipping?
Ouchhhhhhh
I bought this same, Amazon UK via Amazon AU in November. Maybe black friday? $449.71