Office works have 3TB USB3 WD hard drives, just over $10 cheaper from the deal i posted last week for the 3TB USB3 Seagate from Aus Post. Ended up going to JB hi fi and they beat office works by $1.
Also check out Office works for WD My Book Studio Hard drive 4TB USB3 for $139.30 ( not available in a lot of stores but try your luck. I did however find availability at Officeworks ALBURY, FAIRY MEADOWS AND BALLARAT stores.) Good Luck!! :)
I guess that's because OP said he went to JB where they beat it by $1.
oh lol anyway he fixed the price as this is for officeworks not jb.
Sorry to jack top post, but I have just unshelled one and thought people would want to know that inside are traditional 3.5 drives and thought several people would want to know.
Inside mine was a 3tb WD Green drive dated June 2014 -wd30ezrx sata 64 mb cache - so not too old/recent stock.
So worth a buy if you want an internal drive!
Good to know. I know that some WD drives (the 2.5" ones I think?) don't have the standard connector
Thanks for picking up on that. JB beat by $1 which bought it down to $89.30.
How did you price beat with JBhifi?
just wondering as i have $70 of gift cards from coke rewards and this might be worth it lol.
Asked if they could beat Officeworks and they were happy to drop the price by $1.
Now if only OW could price match the $89 (use the receipt) and lower it by 5% to around $85
Post edited ;)
Am I the only one who feels a bit dirty shopping at Office Works without using price matching?
people were concerned with reliability on the 3TB seagates, are these better?
Yeah heaps..like this much better
Short answer: yes
Long answer?
Sorry, I ask because I'll be putting a lot of stuff onto it that I can't afford to lose. I've been hunting for a large HD for a while, but cannot decide which one to go with. Have two old Seagates at home that are making weird noises when i plug them in, so looking to replace them with something a bit more reliable
a lot of stuff you can't afford to lose?
buy two, seriously.
do what diamondd says, buy two. files on one drive isnt a backup at all.
@PVA:
at the very least, buy two so that if the one has a circuit board failure, you can transplant the board from the good drive to the bad one (or pay someone else to do it)
Even for the same model purchased 3 months apart, the internals can be totally different and incompatible.
Not really my question. I have the stuff saved elsewhere, I want to amalgamate my two backup drives that both have different stuff on them to one larger drive. So that I only have one backup. The data isn't so important that I want it backed up in three separate spots
I had one fail on me. Interesting it wasn't the drive itself, but the board between SATA and USB. Problem with WD is you can't just break open the case and put the drive into another generic case or computer without wiping it. Fortunately the board was working long enough for me to copy my files over first. Once done, installed it in another computer, wiped and been reliable since. When it was still in its original case, my computer kept telling me the drive was not reliable and I wiped it three times over a couple of months before I finally decided to take the drive out.
In summary, the case might cause problems, but you could usually salvage the drive. Because it seems WD introduces some kind of "encryption", you may need to source a similar vintage WD case for a transplant if you needed to recover files from the same drive.
Lesson learnt should be to format the drive properly before using it.
No diff. You may have misunderstood.
@quarrymaster: You can get rid of WD's partition structure entirely if you reformat the drive in Linux (e.g. Ubuntu) using Gparted. This makes the drive a standard drive.
@quarrymaster: yep, just use it in the original enclosure. But of course do it before the case fails. For next time you get one of these.
Had a quick look. Not a lot of help with HFS+ for Macs. A bit of work when WD shouldn't have mucked around with it in the first place - if that is indeed what they did.
@quarrymaster: You use Linux to remove the partition table so there's only one empty space. After that you can format it any way you like using any OS.
@superforever: Not sure, but Gparted is very reliable for this purpose. Linux is generally better than Windows for stuff like this. The goal is to make sure that it's a standard partition table, with no hidden parts.
OK this one is good it can delete some patition Windows disk management cannot.
Put it this way..
This is a seagate I bought around 12 months ago
http://files.ozbargain.com.au/upload/86208/28396/sg.jpg
This is a wd I bought many many moons ago
http://files.ozbargain.com.au/upload/86208/28397/wd.jpg
seagate are trash
Same pc, same power, same power rail yet one on the way out after just 7,400 hours, while the other is ticking away with over 38,000 hours.
edit: the other WD drives I have in my main pc..
http://files.ozbargain.com.au/upload/86208/28398/wd2.jpg
http://files.ozbargain.com.au/upload/86208/28399/wd3.jpg
it is clear to me that WD are built to last compared to seagate imo
What program are you using to view those stats?
I reckon all drive manufacturers excluding Toshiba, are very similar quality. It is really luck of the draw. Quality isn't as good as the good old days, but the drives are a fraction of the price. My advice is, buy redundant drives and keep backups.
Yes true but Seagate is the worse.
My 3TB WD just failed. The external case fell on its side while in use and it is completely dead. I was expecting perhaps some sector loss, but it does not even come up now. Staying away from 3TB now.
So you dropped a running drive and you're surprised it broke? Huh.
I did not say I dropped it. It was in a vertical stand and someone else pushed it and it fell to its side. They are supposed to withstand a few G's. You can carry your laptop as well while it is running…
@hunter2: laptop drives are built for it though.
And the "few Gs" they are rated for are when the head is parked, not whilst in use.
Turn on your angle grinder at 7200rpm. Drop you finger on it and see if you get bad sector disc or sore head.
An angle grinder motor runs on just a tiny bit more power you know… Also not sure what my finger has to do with anything.
7200rpm or 5900rpm green . Will pounce if its a 7200rpm WD drive inside.
I would like to know this also, as well as can the drive be removed? I hear wd have gone to a native usb setup recently?
Me to i wouldn't mind getting this to replace my 1tb in my desktop.
Green - I've taken the disk out of one before…. WD30EZRX
When i bought four
Mine was a wd 2TB Black
wd 2tb Blue
and 2x 2tb Green
just luck of draw
a yellow an a red and it'd be a game of Twister
It was a WD blue even though WD doesn't sell Blues above 1TB?
Nobody puts 7200 RPM drives in external enclosures. Heck you'd be hard pressed to find a 4TB 7200 RPM drive under $200
The Seagate 3TB external enclosures have 7200rpm drives, I got 5 of them from an Officeworks deal 18 months ago :P
Mind you I would not recommend them I've had 3 failures in that time. The temptation to go back to WD is great, especially with this deal…
18 months ago, maybe. Today there are none with 7200 RPM drives.
@Nukkels:
I picked up a 3TB under warranty from Officeworks about 2 weeks ago, 7200rpm.
All the cheap Seagate 4TB internal drives are now 5900rpm so it's likely the same drive is in the external enclosure.
Does it really matter that much tho? I know there's probably a lot of debate, but I just did a CrystalDiskMark test on the 3Tb Elements from Officeworks and benchmarked it against my current Seagate 3Tb Barracuda internal SATA drive.
3Tb WD Elements (WD30EZRX 5400rpm USB GREEN)
Sequential Read : 152.431 MB/s
Sequential Write : 151.092 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 52.324 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 95.625 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.606 MB/s [ 148.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.884 MB/s [ 459.9 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.616 MB/s [ 150.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.745 MB/s [ 426.1 IOPS]
3Tb Seagate Barracuda (ST3000DM001 7200rpm SATA)
Sequential Read : 172.095 MB/s
Sequential Write : 160.997 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 42.206 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 66.007 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.432 MB/s [ 105.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.944 MB/s [ 230.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.938 MB/s [ 229.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.883 MB/s [ 215.6 IOPS]
You are talking about 6%-12% slower sequential write/read speeds. Besides the random speeds are faster so I would expect it to perform better than my SATA drive for normal usage and that's despite running on USB 3. I'm probably going to leave the drive in the case and keep the warranty considering these numbers.
Thanks. I nearly bought one from msy yesterday for $130.
the 4tb for under $150 is also good value. As other have asked above, would be interested to hear if they're removable and can be installed internally. I don't care if they're 7200 or 5900 though. :)
They can. Enough how to online
Oh I know they were able to be, I've done one before. But fluberries above mentioned that they'd heard WD were starting to go 'native usb'. All I'd previously heard was that some brands of 2.5" soldered them on directly, but hadn't heard anything about the 3.5" WD specifically having changed from what they were last time I did one, so was hoping someone could verify whether this current batch could or couldn't.
I took last 2 at woolongabba brisbane. Apparently I was not the only one to call :)
Their website shows that it is still in stock at wooloongabba. But I really need to be saving- maybe I need to ban myself from this website.
Good luck with that, I'm in the same boat.
two on hold for me. thanks OP.
Just picked em up this arvo, cheers mate :P
Just picked up one in Ballarat, still 5 left on the shelf.
None left in West of Melb,( Yarraville, Altona, Werribee, Caroline springs, etc) The guy said there were some in rural areas and out of town Taralgon and the like.
Or get 2 of these 6tb for 180 bucks.
That is cheap. I paid 200 from Amazon delivered. I also prefer larger drives. Even if they cost a bit more, they are worth it for me. I put them in NAS device. It wouldn't be a problem if I was using them in a PC. There are enough bays in PC.
Just picked up 2 - 3tib from O'Connor (WA), had to ask as website was showing in stock but there were none on shelf… there are 10 left behind the counter in the locked cupboards.
Thanks, if I hadn't read your post would have assumed it was sold out as nothing was on display at my local store.
Internal hard drive for me was a 5400RPM Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB. Manufacture date of 14 June 2014.
Can i tell what drive i have without opening up the enclosure?
Model number should be visible in device manager on Windows. There are also lots of freeware software applications (like Speedfan) that will do the job.
I bought one this model 2y ago and it faulted by the power chip inside the box. Then I removed cover case and use hard drive as internal disk. I still prefer WD brand and consider to take more on its model at this price.
Can this one be used for the ps4?
Nah man! PS4's use 2.5 inch drives.
Haha, alright. Thanks for replying.
Good price, but non left in my nearby stores.
Can I open it to use it as desktop drive?
Will try to grab 3 tomorrow. Thanks.
Vermont South (VIC) had a few out the back near close of trade Friday night.
should be similar enough for how to open for the rounded case WD external drives - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26OEIjagmM4
though personally I recommend using an old credit card (or two) and once you slightly spread the case at the corners, insert the edge of the card and run it around.. when you feel resistance wiggle it a bit - but use the very edge of the credit card and that way you'll pop open the connectors - not break them off. Do that most of the way around and the case will open fairly easily.
Just grabbed the last one at Liverpool.
Store owner said its sold out all around NSW.
Pretty sure everyone called tonight and put it on hold for tomorrow.
Bought one from Wentworthville. They had 10 more in stock (as of 9 PM). It is not displayed in the shelf, but ask for it.
Grabbed 2 from Vermont South in Vic. Still a few left at 9.45 pm. Thanks OP
Officeworks open till 9:45pm??
Opens till 10pm.
Few on shelf in Mornington. As always, they haven't updated price. Scans correct though
Nice one, I bought a 4TB for 159 at Center com when chrismas, and I thought that a good deal
checking on ice, the cheapest is MSY for $139.00
Slightly disappointed to discover that the enclosure itself doesn't appear to be reusable. Very difficult to reassemble and doesn't recognise standard NTFS formatted drives. Still a good deal just for the hard drive.
You can put the enclosure back together, and the drive can be formatted in the enclosure to get it recognised again - or you can transfer the partitions to a new drive using something like partition magic.
Thanks OP.
Good deal. I picked up the 2Tb model on clearance at Officeworks for $69 a couple of weeks ago, this is even better. I didn't post it since there was only one left.
can see it as in stock at local. will go pick up tomorrow.
I guess this comes NTFS? (the Q&A on office works says it need to be reformated to work with mac). So I would need FAT32 for mac/windows RW ability?
I have an old 1TB ext HDD (usb2) which is FAT32 and can be RW by mac and windows.
For this new 3TB HDD my plan is to partition/format 1TB for macbook time machine backups and leave other 2TB for general file storage accessible to either mac/windows.
Another thought would be to migrate data off my old usb2 1TB HDD and use that solely for Time Machine backups BUT then id have 2 ext HDD connecting to my mac - One for Time machines and one for Storage. Getting a raspberry pi soon so will look into using that as a NAS server to the different HDDs
exFAT format is readable by both MAC and Windows and overcomes the 4GB limit of FAT32.
Thanks op.
6 left in bourke st MEL
Cheap cheap
my local 3 stores has them in stock according to their website.
also the price for me it says is $90.30