external hard drive deals

H

Harbinger

Veteran X
Any good mass storage devices on sale? What are the good brands, which ones should i avoid, what are the typical price points? I need large volume storage and backup, so i don't think ssd is for me.

Any thoughts?
 
Costco sells 3TB seagate drives (USB3) for ~$120. You can rip apart the enclosure to get a normal 3.5 SATA drive (5900 rpm), and the reliability is good. I've purchased about 10 or so, and they're all still working fine despite 24/7 use.

I have no idea how reliable they are if you leave them in the enclosures. They have rubber isolation mounts, but I wouldn't trust an external drive for anything important.

Edit: I've also tried re-using the enclosures with other drives (both other manufacturers and capacities), and it works fine. You can use the adapter as a dock, but the fit isn't perfect: good enough for temporary use. If installed in the full enclosure everything fits fine.
 
I have about 20 x 2 and 3 TB drives floating around and they are great, no failures in 3-5 years with them. in fact I only buy them because they are low RPM and last longer. to buy 'green' 5400 drives there's usually a stupidity markup on them.

usually get em on sale around the $110 - $120 mark anywhere like bestbuy. I got a whack of the 3TB ones on sale for $89 at bestbuy a few months ago due to compatability issues with many electronics/computers etc that only support 2.5GB max.
 
I like the vantec nexstar3 enclosures, they're bulletproof, not ugly, and stack very well. I've got like 5 of them packed with retired drives (and in one case a 3gb samsung for full system backups).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top