• expired

18.0TB WD Ultrastar DC HC550 US$379.10 + $37.91 GST (~A$590) Delivered @ Other World Computing

230

High-end, large capacity NAS drive - and no need to shuck. Works out to $29.72 per TB which for a drive like this seems very good. Looks to be $800-$900 locally.

OWC is a reputable US based retailer specialising in Mac products. Seems like an odd item for them to stock, admittedly…

11-Jan-2022

Update: GST was left out of the deal title, it has been added in. GST is calculated as 10% of $379.10 US, (US$417 total). GST exemptions apply if you are a business and can provide an ABN on the checkout page.

Related Stores

Other World Computing
Other World Computing

closed Comments

  • I’d wonder about warranty…

    • The listing says "Western Digital 5 Year Limited Warranty", so it doesn't sound like you'll be stuck dealing with an O/S retailer.

      https://www.westerndigital.com/en-au/warranty/ultrastar-hdd

      A quick read of this makes it seem that WD will handle RMA's directly through local offices including Australia.

      • That sounds attractive….

    • +1

      The warranty situation is far from clear but an Amazon review from someone in Singapore said they had to contact WD directly to register the drive with them for a 5 year warranty, they couldn't do it online.

      https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B08NWF1X6P/

  • From the page:

    Transfer Rate
    up to 600.0Gb/s

    That monster is faster than my NVMe drive!

    • +1

      Faster than the entire US Department of Energy's network.

      • Oddly specific.

        • Not faster than the fastest ever fibre optic connection so I had to go down from there. Closest I could find without going on a proper google hunt and still gives a good idea of scale.

  • +1

    16TB @ USD299 seems more attractive, and cheaper per TB.

    • Where are you seeing that option?

      • Came as a suggestion for me towards the bottom of the page:
        Mfr P/N: MG08ACA16TE
        OWC SKU: TOSMG08ACA16TE

        • It looks like that’s out of stock. I’ve seen previous deals for those Toshiba’s but avoided because concerns about warranty.

  • +2

    I have 2 of these on the way from this stores black friday sale. Note that shipping is at least US$50.

    Also you get charged 10% GST for orders under $740. If your order is above that I assume you'll probably get hit with duty or GST charges, and have to sort out the paperwork yourself which could be annoying. Or you could get lucky and it will just sail through, I don't know.

    All up this is still a decent deal, but not quite as good as it may initially look.

    • That's a shame. Would pay a premium to not shuck, but $536 is as far as I go ($100 premium)

      • You (most probably) get a 5 year warranty which is a huge plus.

        You do get charged shipping though. The 'free shipping' is not for Australians so this post should be updated to reflect all the extra charges involved. If you buy one my guess is it will cost about US$378 +$50 shipping +10% GST which is US$470, a lot more than AUS$535.

        The extra charges, especially shipping really hurts the deal if you're just ordering one.

        • +1

          The price I posted includes their lowest cost shipping opting, but does not include GST.

          I was buying for business. If you supply an ABN you are GST exempt and they won’t add it on.

          • @gigmizzenmast: Is that legally legit or a loophole?

            Afaik it's not gst exempt so you'd be supposed to declare and pay it later

            • +2

              @justtoreply: For local purchases, you pay the GST and then claim it back when you do your BAS return. For overseas purchases, nothing gets added and there’s nothing to claim back.

          • @gigmizzenmast: where do you enter the ABN? Seems to only be for Amazon sellers, can't find a place to put mine in my profile.

          • +1

            @gigmizzenmast: OK, sorry my maths is off then. To my recollection the cheapest shipping option for 1 HDD was $50 around Black Friday but now it's $29 which makes buying one a much more viable option.

  • Don't forget to include this with your purchase

  • Dumb question: can I just plug this NAS HDD inside my PC to save my movies and photos for storage ( and forget)? I'll only plug it when needed. Will be unplugged when not in use. Thx

    • Just buy external storage. Unless you want to power down, open your case and unplug it.

      Sata hotswap is not implemented on most motherboards. So no disk caddies and hot unplugging. Even though it should be implemented as it's part of the sata specifications.

      Be wary though:
      Some external drives have hardware encryption, so if the drive is ok but the enclosure fails youre stuffed (unless you find a compatible enclosure to put the drive in). And having an enclosure is always an additional point of failure.

      I have a second drive with a copy to deal with that. The second drive should not be purchased at the same time or preferably from the same manufacturer to reduce risk of both drives dying due to being part of a bad manufacturing batch.

  • +1

    OK, the drives arrived today. Each was in a plain cardboard box but seems reasonably well protected. One manufactured in Thailand in May, the other June.

    Trying to register online via WD didn't work so I rang them. They said it was an OEM drive so you had to to claim warranty through the vendor.

    They also said it was an HGST drive and provided a link to register it via them, and it said the same thing.

    https://www2.hgst.com/portal/site/en/support/warranty/

    'The drive is not valid for warranty through HGST. Please return product to your point of purchase.'

    • Dang. Certainly not how they described the warranty. Are you going to send them back or keep them?

      • +1

        Will test them (which takes about 2.5 days each!) and also check out the noise levels and keep them if they pass. I've had exceptionally good luck with hard drives over a long time so am more relaxed about warranty than most.

        There are wildly different reports of the noise levels of these. So far the drives are extremely quiet 99% of the time while being tested but were briefly very noisy at the start.

        Found a bit of warranty discussion here:

        https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/18tb-hgst-…

        I certainly agree that the website saying 'Western Digital 5 Year Limited Warranty' reads as false and misleading, if the warranty is in fact nothing. Still, for the price so far they seem great if they can last a while.

        • How did your testing go regarding noise and heat? Do they run hotter than other drives?

          If you kept them how have you found them overall so far?

          • +1

            @sav11: I bought 4 in total (2 from here and 2 from Amazon) and they all passed testing. Noise is really quiet 99.99% of the time for BAU operation but they can get briefly quite noisy on rare occasions that I don't really understand.

            Perhaps they are a couple of degrees hotter than average compared to my other HDDs.

            Overall they seem really good so far.

            • +1

              @B3: Thanks, appreciate the reply and info.

              Good to know as I did order two. Hopefully they can withstand the heat up here in Darwin!

    • Aside from paying GST at checkout, were you charged any additional duty fees?

      Western Digital's own product page claims

      30-Day Money-Back Guarantee | 5-Year Limited Warranty

      But I assume this is is because they are the "vendor"

      What happens when you put the serial numbers into the HGST warranty status verification page?
      https://www1.hgst.com/warranty/index_gtech_serial.do

      • The www1 site says:

        Not Valid for Warranty
        Verify warranty status > Non G-Tech Drive

        The number you entered has been identified as a non-G-Tech product. Please go back to Warranty Home page to determine the correct type of drive.

        The www2 version of the site says as per above: The drive is not valid for warranty through HGST. Please return product to your point of purchase.

        No duty fees.

        WD would not consider themselves the vendor, unless you buy from them directly. That was the message from that servethehome link above.

        • Thanks for the update. Potentially having to deal with an international RMA certainly makes this a risky purchase.

    • +1

      Hi, do you mind sharing the URL you tried to register these drives for warranty with WD and what it said?

      I did it at https://support-en.wd.com/app/warrantystatus and it allowed me to register. It shows the drives as "In warranty" with the correct 5 year period, but the status is "Out of region". I clicked the Info button for that and got "Product is outside the region (Americas, Europe-Middle East-Africa, or Asia-Pacific) where it was originally shipped."

      Do you know what it means? I guess if there's a failure I have to do an international RMA to WD in the USA?

      • +1

        I tried again and this time was able to register the drives via my WD account:

        https://support-in.wd.com/app/account/assets/product-registr…

        The warranty is the same as yours, in warrant but out of region. When I tried to do this before it wouldn't accept the serial numbers at all so that is progress.

        I don't know what this status means in detail unfortunately, but it looks better than before so thanks for alerting me to try registration again.

  • Warranty aside, bought 2 anyway. Fantastic price compared to AU stock

    • Did you get charged any duty or other fees?

      • Yup

        • +1

          Oh that sucks. Thanks for replying. I ordered 2 as well, hoping I don't get any extra charges.

          What happened, did you get a call from customs and charged import duty or something? My tracking says they've landed and are on their way to my state now.

          • @sav11: i ended up prepaying because its a business and we import lots of stuff and pay duties so its not a big deal

            i think there was another shipping method that didnt have prepaid duties, in which case theyll usually call you once they land and are held pending duties

  • So this is a Much better Deal !

    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/676496

    • That depends whether you have an ABN as with this deal you don't need to pay GST if you enter an ABN which makes it cheaper than the Amazon deal.

      Also OWC package the HDD's properly with the bookend padding. According to comments on OzB Amazon pack them really poorly and sometimes they arrive damaged.

      Both great deals IMO.

      • whether you have an ABN

        What exactly does this mean ? ABNs are public information - everybody has access to thousands of them 🤷🏼‍♂️
        Is there some way to correlate the ABN with the person entering it ?

        • I don't know the answer to that.

          See above comments by other posters about businesses with ABN purchasing and GST collection/payment requirements. Further discussion about it in the deal linked above.

          My mate was happy for me to use his ABN for this. I entered it during checkout and the OWC site removed the GST. I have no affiliation with his business/ABN.

Login or Join to leave a comment