Looks like this is the cheapest for some time
26.40 per TB
Would have a WD 18TB CMR white label drive (WD180EDGZ, 7200RPM, 256MB Cache). Some say could be a white label of a HC550. I'm hanging out for sub $25/TB @ 18TB, which is probably only weeks away.
May require the PIN 3 mod if your PSU isn't SATA 3.3 compliant.
CamelCamelCamel.
Been following for months. After Chia crashed the prices have slowly been coming down. Over the last few weeks the drops have been more frequent and more decent. Check out CCC and you tell me ;-)
everything is cooling down now, the GPUs seem to be on the way treading to RRP.
So no HDD trending back would be expected.
Thanks, what is "Chia crashed" ? Is that bitcoin or similar ?
Chia was a hard disk (or rather SSD backed) cryptocurrency - which didn't do too well post launch and therefore the spike in storage cost has been gradually trending back.
Personally I'm waiting for a more reasonable $20 per TB before I call the insanity over.
Chia was a hard disk (or rather SSD backed)
Not really one or the other. Backed by "cheap bulk storage", ie, hard drives, but where the material for farming it pretty much needs to be generated by grinding up SSDs and feeding them to starving polar bears.
waiting for a more reasonable $20 per TB before I call the insanity over.
Were drives really $20 per TB before Chia? I don't remember that.
@sane: Yeah, that would be nice $20/TB. I'm itching for more storage. I might need to get 2 x @ $450 to fly under the Amazon import tax radar and to keep me going till it drops to $20/TB.
I really need to replace all my 8 & 10 TB drives. Just a bit too small.
TBH: I don't think we will see $20/TB this year especially in the CMR space. Unless there's some big movements in FX rates to USD. $23/TB maybe….
I think it's becoming increasingly difficult for WD & Seagate to increase density beyond 2.2TB per platter . The 22TB drives apprantly will be 10 platters. MAMR went cold and heaven knows when HAMR will ship.
@mikezillakind: That's a good video. STH is a site I've been visiting since it's inception. I get a lot of ideas from their community. When you're dealing with a lot of data, moving it around is critical, noise, cost per port, cooling, power draw, etc all come into play.
I really wonder if there is a physical difference between the WD180EDGZ and say a HC550. The firmware would be different and so would be the feature set on what's enabled/supported etc.
Could the consumer version just be marketed with lower endurance, shorter warranty, etc? IMO I think the drives are physically the same with the only difference being firmware and maybe binning. But if it was binning, then that would be something important.
Doesn't really apply to me anyway. I would be lucky to do 10 x TDW (Total Drive Writes), first two being the initial full drive pass + CRC before putting the drive in service and the next two being the data migration + CRC. After that's is pretty much read only and not huge volumes. After a few years it's retired. Hence why I'm in the market for lots of 18TB WD's to replace my 8 & 10TB's.
Drives would spend 95% of the year powered off as this storage is more of a warm tier, data gets retrieved as needed to a hot tier which is NAND based (mostly SSD, nvme when I'm in a rush). I used to replace them yearly but as endurance has improved there I can keep NAND for years.
There is also replicas, but not your traditional RAID type; I don't care if I lose disk, I care if I replicate corruption. But this is a very specific use case.
Cold is backups. Everything is backed up. But I have limited retention with that much data only a few years with some datasets.
But for anyone using it a high rotation media servers or something, they better check out this video, up to 300TB workload which includes writes and reads.
@mrhugo: $20/TB seems unlikely. I don't live in Australia so can't be bothered doing the calculations but AFAIK cheapest tended to be US$190 before any GST (or shipping) for a 14TB which is a bit cheaper than this (US$297.97 for 18TB) but not cheaper by that much.
Wow. This is amazing!
Has anyone cracked one open recently?
Yea I got one last year during Amazon black friday, it was around $23/TB after cash back.
Can confirm the drive is WD180EDGZ.
Same here
did you need the 3pin mod?
The 4 x WD180EDGZ I got out of these last black Friday did not require the mod.
Not relevant. Your psu is a deciding factor.
This or the Seagate External HDD with the EXO Drives inside?
Same result as Meaty. Got 4 x WD180EDGZ drives out of the black Friday deal.
If I need this to store another 18tb of porn, is that a problem?
Ask your parents.
If I need this to store another 18tb of
pornlinux ISOs, is that a problem?
My oath it is Hellcrusher, pick a distro and stick to it! LoL
Ask your girlfriend/boyfriend.
Yes!
You need at least 3x18TB to build a RAID array with redundancy 😏
it can store 60 hours of 4k video. :)
where can i get the power adapter cable AU version?
A slight neat twist with a pair of pliers worked for me.
I heard here that you register the product, then lodge a service request and they send you out an adaptor. All free.
Never tried it as I care about the internal drive.
Such a waste, you can't even give those cases and power adaptors away. I can only keep them for so sold before they need to go.
Contact WD support !
Is there a timeframe when they'll send you a new cable? I bought a WDMycloud Home from AmazonUS a while ago thinking I'd save $15 but ended up regretting it as international adapters take up 2 sockets of space on a power board)
you would be Saving more than $15 ! you contact them and when they get back to you hopfully they send via fed ex - could be 4 weeks , i have adptor plug to place on the end and the board i have is spaced out enough …
one more question do we need to pay tax for this product ? cuz it's importing
Anything sold on Amazon AU has the total cost at checkout.
cheers
Just keep the total under $1000 AUD or you pay an import fee on top of the GST. I would really like to know why this is!
I was going to try and explain my view on it but then found Amazon has a page explaining it better: https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/help/customer/display.html?node…
I know this is beside the point, but am I the only one who finds the pictures on the listing to be amusing? None of the photos show the hard drive actually plugged in properly (although the "Fast transfer rates" picture does show the USB cable plugged in but no power cable?). I particularly liked the lady in green smiling at her hard drive as it just sat standing on her desk, again, not plugged into anything.
she's smiling because she has hidden wiring, just like the engine bay of a show car
.
This external HDD is good for Hyper Backup on your NAS system. The price is good but not the best. I have just bought this model for $448 last Dec.2021, the HDD is a bit noisy when it is running, otherwise it is all good. It does not matter if it is CMR or SMR when you are not intending to use it as NAS HDD.
I see some people want to buy a few of these for doing raid. I could understand for costing concern, but you get yourself in a trap in the long term, for your data and HDD warranty issue. These are only for casual external backup and Not for NAS drives. it is from Amazon US, you will need adaptor to plug in Oz powerpoint. It did not come with a universal adaptor when I bought it from Amazon UK, so I had to use an old one of mine to convert the plug.
Does this require a power adapter to work in Australia when using it as an external drive with USB?
Picture in the listing indicates no.
Experience indicates yes.
Yes, absolutely does. This enclosure or internal 3.5" drive require a power adapter, any old AC to DC brick with matching barrel connector as the one in the box, as long as it outputs 12.0V and at least 1.5A - 2A to be safer… I'm not an electrician [to be advising], but I do this with my dual HDD docks (3A) that don't come with a long enough run of power cable; extension cords can bugger off.
Even though these are good prices, the 18TB WD Red Pro drives were down to around $540 last week. I felt more comfortable buying those for my 4 bay NAS in regards to warranty etc. than shucking these.
If It was an 8 bay NAS though…
last Price i saw this was about 542 when it had stock the other night that i linked it … perhaps grab this when it comes back in to stock( is better than the reds)
For shucking, the performance of the shuck drive is questionable if you ask me. The drive behaves so strangely when I plug it directly on an older computer's sata, to the point that it freezes when transferring TBs of data and I thought I had a dud.
It only started working when I put it back on the usb interface. It did work on a newer computer's sata interface though
For shucking, the performance of the shuck drive is questionable if you ask me.
This is not the case - something is wrong at your end ☹
It should work perfectly. Have you run full drive tests on the drive ?
I have, and can't say the write performance of the drive is that good (around 30MB/sec), compared to my 10TB red drive.
Other issues I had:
-the drive was also slightly thicker and didn't fit to the 3.5" slot
-the drive vibrates like crazy in the middle of the night, ie. when it wakes up
It should be able to write at about 200MB/s…
You've got something else going on.
Well this is fun, got sent 12TB MyBook instead of 18TB elements, 12TB box, 12TB drive, 18TB barcode slapped on the bottom of the box. Amazon seem to be getting worse at this.
Same here * 3
How do you know only a few weeks away?