Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Disk Prices on Amazon

diskprices.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 224 posts

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#71

Post by cnst »

sn wrote: post #32

We stopped buying drives from Amazon when we got drives for "the wrong region" and couldn't RMA them. NewEgg is a bit better, but don't buy refurbished drives. Provantage is another reputable vendor that usually has decent prices. If you're local to the SF bay area, check out Central Computers. King Star USA also works if you're a business customer making a large purchase.

I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon. Their Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA) idea was quite a game changer, but the implementation with the inventory co-mingling is something that I'd much rather stay away from as a consumer.

There's been oh-so-many reports that even if you're buying from the official store of any known brand, with FBA, then you might as well still receive a knock-off, due to the inventory co-mingling issue. Have they ever resolved this for good, or is noone really bothers to even pay any attention to this anymore?

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#72

Post by wtallis »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #42
paxys wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You local Best Buy will also probably have 5 hard disks total. The chances of getting exactly what you want (looking at the list in the linked site) is minimal.

Hard Disks sure, but I've gotten a reasonable choice of SSD's even one that was faster than any SSD I've owned thus far.

It's really easy for Best Buy to stock Samsung SSDs and therefore offer you something faster than anything else you've ever owned. But that doesn't mean you aren't overpaying by at least $40/TB compared to a good Amazon or Newegg price on an almost-as-fast drive from a smaller brand.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#73

Post by wtallis »

Const-me wrote: post #22
dzhiurgis wrote: post #18

Missing External SSD option (also while at it, would need to add speed as it's quite important factor).

IMO it's better to make that yourself. When you let the companies pick which model of disk to embed in their product, they pick the cheapest one available. Probably not what you want. Personally, I have Zalman ZM-VE300, also no-name m.2 2280 USB 3 enclosures, both work fine. If you'll do the same, don't forget there're 2 sorts of m.2 disks, SATA and NVME, USB enclosures for them aren't compatible.

DIY portable SSDs are great, unless you want something ruggedized/splashproof.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#74

Post by toast0 »

joshstrange wrote: post #60
toast0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need to either use molex to sata power to bypass the 2.2v issue or tape the pin You mean the 3.3v issue. In most cases, you can also just clip the 3.3v wire that goes to the sata power connectors from your power supply. It's orange, you won't be missing out by not having it anymore, and it's easy to clip with wire cutters. You should put a dab of electrical tape on the cut ends, but a clean cut isn't likely to…

:headsmack: I couldn’t remember the right voltage and I googled “2.2v” and I found a few reddit threads and assumed that was correct. 3.3v is the right number, thank you for correcting me. Yeah I bought some tape to cover the pin if needed but I found the molex cables to be easier, I didn’t know you could just cut the wire, I feel stupid now lol.

Well, now you know; I found a couple people mentioning it in different forums, but there's a lot more posts on reddit, and I didn't see it mentioned there.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#75

Post by hadlock »

cnst wrote: post #68
toast0 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best I can figure is that Amazon sort by price is using the lowest price from any new offer, even after you've narrowed to a specific seller. It might be some grades of used as well. It's also likely that the prices are periodically refreshed for the index, not live. I don't have any real information though, other than a confirmation that it doesn't do what I want either.

How can a site this large get away with such a basic functionality not working as any of their users would want for such a long time? Did it ever work? I think I've noticed it not working like 5 or 6 years ago when I was shopping for shoes, if not earlier than that. Keep in mind that even without Zappos, they're in the business of selling shoes, too, and have ran some crazy promotions around shoes, too.

Have you ever tried searching for apps on the Google/Android Play store? It's a complete disaster if you're trying to find something specific that's not in the top 20 apps. Given that Search is Google's specialty my personal conclusion is that search is fundamentally broken on the Play Store on purpose.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#77

Post by natch »

smogcutter wrote: post #45
ReverseCold wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If possible, Micro Center or Frys. Frys is somehow profitable but with dwindling stock at every California/Nevada location I’ve been to recently (maybe an indicator of higher prices?), but Micro Center is great.

There was a big thread about Fry’s a few weeks ago. Apparently the story behind the empty shelves is they’re having contract issues with suppliers.

That's the line they're giving out, anyway. I'm curious to see if it's just a ruse to keep some employees around and keep customers coming in paying full price as they clear the shelves before something else like complete shutdown.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#79

Post by catalogia »

OJFord wrote: post #61
mNovak wrote: post #48

Setting aside the issue of counterfeits on Amazon, this is really nice. Clear, simple, functional and allows you to explore the space not just comparison shop for a specific item. I've long thought Amazon has terrible search and sort options for things like computer parts. Trying to buy e.g. RAM is a nightmare.

Amazon's sort just flat out doesn't work, I don't understand it, it's obviously not incompetence (and anyone can call a std lib `sort` fn on a given field anyway) so I don't understand why it's an option, why it pretends that sorting by price is something that you can do. It's not just that it doesn't include shipping (for those which have a fee, which tends to be the cheap tack, presumably to try to catch you out) -…

I was at an Amazon all-hands years ago (I haven't worked there for years) and I saw an employee ask Bezos what Amazon was going to do about the poor quality of search. Bezos brushed off the criticism and said the search team did good work.

I don't know why. Maybe he earnestly thinks it's good, or just has different priorities. But I don't expect it to get better.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#80

Post by jjeaff »

mNovak wrote: post #48

Setting aside the issue of counterfeits on Amazon, this is really nice. Clear, simple, functional and allows you to explore the space not just comparison shop for a specific item. I've long thought Amazon has terrible search and sort options for things like computer parts. Trying to buy e.g. RAM is a nightmare.

Have there been any cases of counterfeit hard drives? I have heard of USB drives rigged to report incorrect free space, but I haven't heard of the same for hard drives.

Hard drives are a little different in that it's not something that countless chinese companies make and is mostly differentiated by brand. There are only a handful of companies that actually make hard drives and prices are all pretty similar.

Post reply on HN