This is the cheapest I've seen the 12TB model which usually goes for just over $500.
CamelCamelCamel.
Wait really? I ordered a 14TB HD it came in around a week. Shocked me tbh because I ordered some PSU cables from PCCG and its not even here yet.
It had oily fingerprint sweat marks though. I hope I dont get covid.
lol
Amazon US orders ship and arrive in wildly different timeframes.
I do heaps of orders of all different stuff (about 25 orders in 6 months). My two longest orders have taken 1 month (Fastway), fastest has been 2 business days (UPS, but I've also had 3 packages by them arrive in 4 business days), but most orders have averaged about a week and some change (DHL) to land at my doorstep. Any package shipped via Fastway has taken up to 2 weeks just for Amazon to get around to putting it on a truck to the airport, but the other carriers have left the warehouse overnight or in 2 days.
All shipped via the same free 'expediated' Prime shipping option, all over COVID period.
Well a week ago was Prime day so you can understand orders being a bit slower than usual then.
Yep exactly, I'm understanding but just a FYI
I've never had an Amazon US or UK or AU parcel exceed the estimated delivery time at the time of ordering. What was the delivery estimate in your case? Was it longer than normal?
Waiting for some kitchen items and car cleaning stuff from the UK. I've ordered on Prime day and they shipped stuff only yesterday. The estimated delivery will be Nov 3 max and I'm quite confident I'll get it on that day or a bit before.
I thought the general rule was never buy bare drives from Amazon? Or do they provide better packaging when shipping overseas?
Details here at rule #3
https://blog.linuxserver.io/2019/07/16/perfect-media-server-…
No idea what the packaging is like but if they're damaged it's insta refund
I'd hope internationally it's shipped better, Amazon usually go overboard with shipping IME
Yeah do thorough tests with something like HDTune Pro the moment you get it. I'm also partial to running a few passes with Lowvel. If there are issues, as Drpepper666 wrote, just get it swapped immediately.
Probably not a bad rule, I bought one through them 2 weeks ago(US too), and it was DOA. Got one from Futa instead 2 days later and running perfectly.
Cant really comment on drive shipments, but everything I ever bought from Amazon generally has really good packaging. In fact it's usually overkill. I have had small items come in ridiculously oversized boxes.
I paid less for the 16TB Seagate Desktop Expansion drives and shucked them for the Exos drives inside, a way better drive for similar money. I just finished upgrading my home storage server with six of them, the room is noticeably cooler (the drives run around 20°C cooler, which adds up to a fair bit of extra power and heat) and they're practically silent, overall a huge improvement over the HGST drives that were in there.
are exo's… 24x7 NAS graded?
I've almost pulled the trigger on Exos while looking at Ironwolf but the extra noise + temperature is putting me off for NAS use.
@slick7: Honestly I don't think you have much to worry about - my experience with the Exos drives has been pretty great on both counts. Granted I'm comparing them to the older HGST drives I had, but they're substantially quieter, cooler and faster. My storage server was sitting on my desk with the lid off for three weeks while I was upgrading it, and the noise level gradually improved as each drive was replaced, until all the HGST drives were gone and pretty much all the clicking and clacking went away. It still 'rumbles' when being accessed - there are six drives, all with nine platters each, so disk activity is going to cause a certain amount of noise. Also remember that Seagate's product lines use common architectures, so the 16TB Ironwolf, Ironwolf Pro and Exos all use the same nine platter configuration. The major difference between them is firmware optimisation to make the Exos more vibration resilient. TweakTown wrote a good article comparing the three when they were launched.
So in summary, I doubt the Ironwolf will be significantly different to the Exos in either respect, but the Exos should be significantly more reliable.
Hahaha who is negging me for this? Seriously?
Sorry that was me accidently when I went to like it :/ I'm unsure how to undo it haha.
Do you have a link to the drive you got? Cause the 16tb seagate expansion ones i found online are around $500.
Haha all good, that certainly explains it ;-)
Here's a link to Amazon - they're a bit more expensive at the moment, when I bought them they were around USD$300, I think they came to around AUS$425 to $435 delivered a couple of months ago (I split them into separate orders of two drives apiece, to avoid import duty). If you're not in a hurry, watch out for them over Black Friday as I expect they will drop a fair bit from current prices.
@TrevorX: Yeah awesome! I just picked up a few for now at $453AUD each but will wait out till end of year sales to buy the main bulk :D
Cheers for the info! Just saved me some major $$$ for my new studio set-up!
@corehaza: You're welcome. Just remember to test each of them thoroughly before you shuck them. Also a tip - HD Tune Pro will only work for 14 days before locking itself, but you can uninstall it, remove its data from the system registry, then reinstall it for another 14 days while you finish your testing.
If you use single edge razor blades you should be able to remove the drive with almost no damage to the plastic casing. I only broke two tabs in the last few I did, and the rest of the casing is unmarked.
@TrevorX: Yeah cheers for that :) I've got a full version of HD Tune Pro so all ready to go. I've shucked a few drives in the past, but never realised the 16TB seagate expansions were exos drives!!! Will be doing some major testings on them as I'll be storing a few 100TB's worth of film production footage for my company, so can't afford anything to crash. We just had a RAID get fried during a power outage (somehow it managed to get through all the power fail safes) and lost an entire feature film….though luckily we have 3 back-ups of it offsite!
Hoping to use the leftover HDD enclosures to house some old spare drives lying around :D
@corehaza: I hope you're not using hardware RAID? You should be using a double-conversion UPS for all your hardware (storage and network) - double-conversion never exposes the connected devices to mains power, everything comes from a high quality inverter from the batteries, so they always see a perfect power curve. Also remember a major power spike can bridge between components as it burns out a piece of equipment, possibly feeding back through another channel to other devices, so it's essential that all your equipment is sufficiently isolated. One of the things I do is design resilient storage systems… and networks, and servers… If you'd like to chat about what you're doing, feel free to PM me :-)
Will keep that in mind. Didn't realise they were packing EXOS drives in their 16TB externals.
With most capacities it's pot luck, but generally you're getting Barracudas in them. There is no 16TB Barracuda yet, so the 16TB Desktop Expansion drives are currently all Exos, but Seagate is expanding both the 16TB and 18TB lines to their Ironwolf and Skyhawk lines (I got an email about the Skyhawk launch this morning, actually) so it's only a matter of time before they replace the Exos with a cheaper line like the Barracudas in the Desktop Expansion drives.
To be honest, my experience has given me a great deal of confidence in Seagate at the moment - the only way they could afford to ship Exos drives in much cheaper Desktop Expansion products is if their manufacturing quality is so reliable they're exceeding targets and qualifying close to 100% of the manufacturing line - if yields of QA passed products was lower it would eat into their margin, forcing them to try to extract everything they can out of shipping drives. They're meant to be launching 20TB in Q1 2021 and at this rate, I see no reason they won't continue to hit targets, which bodes extremely well for the price of storage in the coming years - if Seagate and WD can hit all their upcoming targets, we'll see capacity growth like nothing we've seen before, and price/GB will really start to come down.
Yep understood, that makes sense that the Exos drives would pop up in the expansion enclosures if no cheaper lines are available as of yet. I have a 16 bay server full of Ironwolf 8TB drives, I have been extremely happy with them. They have been reliable for almost 3 years now. An upgrade to some 16TB drives would be great. And if there is a way to get hold of Exos drives without paying Exos prices, sign me up.
I can see the Barracuda Pro range ends at 14TB. So going 16TB+ is the way to go.
https://www.seagate.com/au/en/internal-hard-drives/hdd/barra…
Yep, that's the one. Wait for a Black Friday price drop - you can set up price alerts in Camelcamelcamel if you don't want to lurk manually. Also remember you can set up OzBargain deal alerts, so you'll receive an email when a deal gets posted that matches your criteria.
I won't really trust drives being shipped over amazon. If you read the few have a few that just wasn't packed properly. I've had drives that was shipped to me and it make noises you won't want a drive to make. So i've always gone down to the local msy to pick up my ironwolf 8tbs. I'm a photographer and videographer, can't loose anything as i use these drives as my backup system. I've got about 44 of these ironwolf 8tb atm and haven't run into any problems yet beside the ONE i bought on amazon.
While I completely understand the sentiment (honestly most stuff I get from Amazon is very poorly protected), I've bought a few dozen drives from Amazon and I'm yet to get a damaged one. All the recent drives have been external drives in retail boxes with their own half-decent protective packaging, but I've also bought internal retail and bare OEM drives, too. Maybe I'm just lucky? The one thing that's kept me buying drives from Amazon (or, indeed, any online shop) is the knowledge that I'm covered by warranty and buyer protection - if I report to Amazon that a drive has tested faulty within a day or two of receiving it, they will replace it without a second thought. If I have a drive that's unnecessarily noisy, even if Amazon (or another retailer) will be difficult about swapping an otherwise operational drive, I know from experience that both WD and Seagate will happily replace it under warranty (as I've replaced drives like this before).
Yes, having to get replacement drives is a PITA, but it depends if it's worth it for several hundred dollars in savings per drive. The 16TB Exos drives were at least twice the price anywhere local to what I paid for them, which worked out to nearly $2.5k in savings. That kind of money is worth the risk of a little inconvenience, IMO.
well yea, if you're talking bout saving $2500 then sure. but the ironwolf drives don't come in any packaging besides the silver plastic. and all amazon did was put some of those air pillows in the box. the drive wasn't protected at all. But if you're talking about buying external drives that has nice retail packaging, i won't even think twice about buying it on amazon. haha In this particular case, the price wasn't a huge saving, and for the 40-50 bucks, i rather have a piece of mind. especially when it's 8-12TB worth of files im dealing with per drive. I haven't lost any files yet in the past 12 years of doing this. always have 3 duplicates of each drives, and touch wood I won't even loose all 3 of the same drive! LOL
I think I've saving like $10 per drive over Umart lol, not sure it was worth it, Umart is just down the road.
I ordered some 4TB of same drive from Amazon US a week ago, still yet to begin shipping, just FYI anyone that needs a drive quickly.