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Disk Prices on Amazon

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Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#21

Post by wtallis »

theamk wrote: post #2

This seems all Amazon links only (with affiliate codes). Given their known counterfeit problems and fake reviews, I would recommend avoiding it for important things like disk drives. Plus, they are not guaranteed to be the cheapest anyway. If you need to buy a drive, I would recommend local brick and mortar store first, and some sort of proper aggregator (which looks at multiple sites, not just Amazon) second.

Buying an internal hard drive from Amazon is extremely fraught, but I'm not aware of similar problems for internal SSDs. And they are definitely one of the most reliable places to get good prices for consumer retail SSD models.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#22

Post by Const-me »

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.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#24

Post by numpad0 »

wtallis wrote: post #21
theamk wrote: post #2

This seems all Amazon links only (with affiliate codes). Given their known counterfeit problems and fake reviews, I would recommend avoiding it for important things like disk drives. Plus, they are not guaranteed to be the cheapest anyway. If you need to buy a drive, I would recommend local brick and mortar store first, and some sort of proper aggregator (which looks at multiple sites, not just Amazon) second.

Buying an internal hard drive from Amazon is extremely fraught, but I'm not aware of similar problems for internal SSDs. And they are definitely one of the most reliable places to get good prices for consumer retail SSD models.

I guess SSDs are less sensitive to environments

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#25

Post by numpad0 »

joshstrange wrote: post #3

If you are trying to build a NAS or similar then my suggestion is go with shucked WD EasyStore externals, you need to either use molex to sata power to bypass the 2.2v issue or tape the pin but they are WD Whites inside and work very well from my experience. I just keep waiting for the 14TB's to fall a little further so I can replace one of my 5TB parity drives with that so I can grow my array.

Shucked drives aren’t necessarily cheap, bare drives are always cheaper in my country

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#26

Post by jldugger »

paxys wrote: post #11
theamk wrote: post #2

This seems all Amazon links only (with affiliate codes). Given their known counterfeit problems and fake reviews, I would recommend avoiding it for important things like disk drives. Plus, they are not guaranteed to be the cheapest anyway. If you need to buy a drive, I would recommend local brick and mortar store first, and some sort of proper aggregator (which looks at multiple sites, not just Amazon) second.

Disagree about the local stores part, but yeah for specific areas like electronics I always go for a more trustworthy site (like NewEgg, Jet or sometimes Best Buy). Prices are usually the same as Amazon, and if not they will almost always price match.

IDK, I suspect newegg reviews are equally gamed. Fundamentally, I think we need to come to terms with the fact that product reviews are worth the price the consumer paid for them: typically zero.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#27

Post by giancarlostoro »

all_blue_chucks wrote: post #19
theamk wrote: post #2

This seems all Amazon links only (with affiliate codes). Given their known counterfeit problems and fake reviews, I would recommend avoiding it for important things like disk drives. Plus, they are not guaranteed to be the cheapest anyway. If you need to buy a drive, I would recommend local brick and mortar store first, and some sort of proper aggregator (which looks at multiple sites, not just Amazon) second.

Have you ever tried to buy tech at a B&M store? They will have obsolete products that have been on the shelves for years listed at the original MSRP. I'm sure there are exceptions but this is generally terrible advice.

BestBuy will price match Amazon. So getting the real deal sounds better.

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#28

Post by tartoran »

theamk wrote: post #2

This seems all Amazon links only (with affiliate codes). Given their known counterfeit problems and fake reviews, I would recommend avoiding it for important things like disk drives. Plus, they are not guaranteed to be the cheapest anyway. If you need to buy a drive, I would recommend local brick and mortar store first, and some sort of proper aggregator (which looks at multiple sites, not just Amazon) second.

I’d buy a lot of things used but never a harddrive or any storage/backup media. Not sure if these are countereit though, I’ve never seen any bootlegs sold as used ever..

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#29

Post by _Nat_ »

empyrical wrote: post #5
rasz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While nobody counterfeits mechanical drives, you can still get screwed buying "refurbs"/"tested only, like new" and similar "deals". SMART data can, and is often reset, making 3 year old >30K hour drives pulled from storage racks report mere couple power on counts and less than hour total lifetime run time.

Sometimes you can also run into situations where someone returned an external hard drive, but they swapped the drive inside with a cheap low capacity drive (like a 500gb drive put into an 8tb drive enclosure)

That's not a particularly scary scenario when buying from, e.g., Amazon.com, as it'd seem like the unit could just be returned for not being the advertised product.

I'm curious, though, why would anyone bother with a scam like that?

I mean, it'd seem like someone with the necessary technical skills could make a larger, steadier income through honest means. So why would they waste their time/effort on something that can backfire when noticed by the returns center or the next buyer?

It certainly wouldn't surprise me if people've done this a few times -- I mean, people do all sorts of weird things -- but is it something that's happened enough to be notable?

Re: Disk Prices on Amazon

#30

Post by nullc »

Anyone know of one that can display a sorted price per GB _with an offset_? E.g. so you can put in a marginal cost per additional SATA port and get corrected figures?

Saving 5 dollars on drives by using 30 3TB drives instead of 6 15TB drives isn't a win in terms of pricing when you consider the total cost.

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