Marketplace
This post contains affiliate links. OzBargain might earn commissions when you click through and make purchases. Please see this page for more information.
Seagate expansion 4TB 2.5" seems like a good price at $118 :)
Seagate 4TB Expansion Portable HDD $118 Delivered @ Amazon AU
980
Sycotek on 17/11/2023 - 10:09 amazon.com.au (2578 clicks)
Last edited 17/11/2023 - 10:10 by 1 other user
Last edited 17/11/2023 - 10:10 by 1 other user
Price History at 
CamelCamelCamel.
CamelCamelCamel.Related Stores
closed Comments
spinning rust
It's in the title
Portable HDD
It’s also mentioned about half a dozen times on the Amazon page: “hard disk”.
It is a spinning one.
Actually HDD still useful if you're looking for mid-long term storage, like 2-5 years. Less than that SSD is not more expensive but way faster and safer, longer than that you'll need a proper archival media like M-DISCs.
What do you mean? Do you mean HDDs won't last long? I have a couple of older than 5 years HDDs. If that's the case, I may need to back them up immediately.
It’s already pretty lasting compared to flash storage (which may start to show error beyond repairable at 2-3 year mark). HDDs can easily reach 10 years without being powered but you shouldn’t take the risk. Even LTO tapes should be scanned every few years to ensure data integrity.
It’s just physics.
If theyre not already backed up, they're not important.
Most users didnt even checksum their files anyway, so you wont have any way to tell if they're minorly corrupted, unless they just dont work anymore.
@MasterScythe: I mean it's terabytes of 4K (highest quality out there). If course, it's replaceable if lost, but a lot of time and effort has gone into collecting them. And backing up something like 20 terabytes is neither easy nor cheap.
@DontNeedThis: Different ideas of easy and affordable.
To me, $500 and 1hdd is a small price for that much data.
I have a 320gb WD portable from like 2008 still spinning away happily in my PC now
Let it spin and it will be fine. If you store it for a few years, it might suicide :)
I've been using a seagate portable HD since 10yrs now.. 0 issues
I bought my first PC 30 years, I have many personal examples of drives going for 10 years and drives, including SSD, barely lasting 3 years. The point is to make sure you are backing up your data properly.
You think this could be a 4TB SSD for $118 dollars?
If it is SSD it will 100% list it as SSD
…and sold out in a few minutes.
…if not a few seconds.
The more important question is if they are shingles drives, SMR or CMR?
Any recommendations for a 2TB hard drive with better transfer speeds?
2TB Portable SSD it is. 2.5" HDDs are unmistakenly slow.
Thanks will stick to SSD, however given it's pricier may have to hold out till black Friday then.
Just buy an enclosure and drive and put them together yourself. Usually more flexible and cheaper than a boxed unit.
2TB SSD = ~$150, enclosure = $30
About twice the price but data on the move is priceless.
Should still be sub $200 after you buy the drive and enclosure.
You can get 2TB SSDs on AliExpress for like $80. I wouldn't usually take my chances with cheaper brands like Goldenfir if it's for important data, but in my case it's just for game storage on my Xbox Series X. Got a SomnAmbulist and it works great. Transfer between internal and SSD is ~2.8Gbps, which is like 4x faster than if transferring to my external 4TB Seagate HDD (basically the same as this one).
Do you have a link? Im looking on aliexpress and it looks like SSDs are ridiculously cheap (like $30 for 60tb) which makes me think they're terrible quality or very slow.
Fake capacity drives. Be careful
@ritzaus: Yeah i was reading a lot of the reviews. A lot of the "SSD" when opened up are 64gb micro sd cards. Not 60tb SSD hard drives. Maybe it might be cheaper for me to buy a reputable SSD drive and an enclosure.
How is this compared to the Seagate One Touch? Had a WD one that broke down and all data with it:(
No difference in hardware.
Depends on how it was broken. If it's because you smacked it, go SSD instead.
$100 has been the price range for 4TB for a while
You are right, but not lately. Hasn't been anything in this price range for a while.
I'm not a brand loyalist by any means, indeed if anything I tend to buy Seagate because they don't often try to make it hard to shuck them by putting on custom connectors like Western Digital do (my server has both drives, and thankfully none of them have died even the notorious 3TB drives are still working).
That being said, these portable drives have been nothing but trouble for me. They tend to work really well for a month or so, then all of a sudden their performance becomes terrible (like less than 1MBps) then they go back to Seagate and are swapped for a new drive for the process to repeat again (I'm on my third). I do have to say Seagate have been good about it, they send me a new drive and a return box for the old one, but the reliability has been less than stellar. I should probably make it clear here, I don't use these shucked in a server, I use them as they are sold - a USB portable hard drive.
Anyway, see how you go. The upsides with these is that you can shuck them, so if the USB connector dies you can still recover data, but so far for me I can't get that far with them to take advantage of that benefit. I will say that Seagate has been responsive in swapping them out though, so that has been nice to not have to wage war with a manufacturer.
I've owned a lot of portable 2.5" drives and concur they are trouble and one needs a good backup scheme. My experience has been possibly more WD than Seagate failing for me, but that will change person to person. But for me as well, shuckability is why I only buy seagate now. heck if the drive dies you are still left with a perfectly usable usb -> sata enclosure with seagate.
Poor performance experienced: please share your frequency of accidental-bumps with power-on ?
May be treat them as desktop-storage ?Buy via OW for ease of warranty-claim: 3 years-> https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/seagate-4t…
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-…
Might get it price matched… not sure I trust Amazon's packaging
Hodl for black friday?
Ah, I woulda jumped if it were the Backup Plus Portable 4tb. I already have one of them and it's been great for over 2 years.
I have 4 of these ITX server and 3 of the 5TB (unraid/plex)
They are slow slow but with 2 x 1TB NVME cache drives not too badCan anyone suggest the best "long term" / reliable way to store files. Would this do the trick? Or is it worth buying storage and uploading to the cloud?
If cost is no problem then cloud all the way
You should backup to more than one location. The hard drive is one location, the cloud could be another.
I agree. Unfortunately if you rely solely on the cloud and you don't have internet access, you are unable to access your data.
There should be three points of backup. The source location (NAS or DAS or both ideally), offsite at another location and the cloud. By only having one of these, there will be a vulnerability.
I remember buying this for like $100 few yrs ago
There's now a duopoly of HDD manufacturers, so no more price wars, little competition.
Purchase limit of 3 per customer. Anyone got any idea how long these limits last before Amazon will let you buy more?
No need to wait, Amazon accounts are free.
I've heard they check addresses and payment details if you try and bypass purchase limits and can ban your account.
If there's someone else in your household with a payment method you could ask to borrow it, create a new account and compensate them for the cost of the hard drive(s)
Any idea why it required lithium ion battery mentioned in the technical details ?
What's the difference between an Expansion Portable HDD and a standard Portable HDD? What does the word Expansion Change?
Mostly, just peoples perception of the product.
Might have different sku drives internally, but its still educated guesswork if you intend to shuck.
Used to get a clearance Toshiba 4TB one for $50 from OW.
i would only get a desktop HDD, i would get a portable SSD.
probably why its on a great sale.
Is there a reason we don't see many 5TB or greater portable HDDs? I have 4TB already but need at least a 5TB for a NAS backup
2.5" HDDs are capped at 5TB since 2016, there doesn't seem to be much innovation done for those drives and SSD is more popular. Anything bigger are 3.5" and that's not really a portable size.
I would consider a 3.5" if it didn't require a separate power source
Not bad, contemplating if I should get this or wait for better Black Friday Deals
Same
I wouldn't touch a Seagate Portable. I've had 3 of them fail on me. None of them lasted longer than 4 years.
I agree, mine also died within 3 years also
I have a few external hard drives of various makes with pics are you saying I could lose them pics as hard drives don’t last?
What’s the point in that the purpose of these is to keep your stuff safe.
I used to get these music CDs and now they are provided online now and I will need to save them to a hard drive.
I will make CDs out of them as yes I still like to play CDs, but I want to keep these files safe in a hard drive as one there are only available to me only for 6 months to download and use etc and I pay for these.
So obviously as they are no longer done in cd format I will need to store them.I thought hard drives was to keep your stuff safe as the saying goes remember to back up your stuff from pc to hard drive.
Yes i could store on my pc but would use up a lot of disc space and i don’t trust pc as can go wrong.Yes hard drives tend to fail eventually and have a limited life span - the point is to have multiple backups in case they do.
Can we shuck this one ? I dont care it's 2.5 or 3.5 😂. Just need for my small nas
Careful. 2.5" drives are mostly SMR AFAIK.
Bought this one 2 years ago for $119. They should be cheaper by now?
If anyone is interested in 3.5 externals, looks like the 8TB is on special too for $225.29: https://www.amazon.com.au/Seagate-Desktop-External-Drive-STG…
I daresay that would be an SMR drive - ok for backups, but you'd be disappointed if you shucked it and put it in a raid array.
Chatted with JB and price-matched instead, then used 3% off gift cards from CR.
Mine have already shipped and are in Vic so don't think they're coming from the UK.
Yep my bad, edited my comment.
Any deals on larger drives?
Looking at 10tb X 2 for my plex server (duplicates, with one being stored offsite). Was originally thinking of having a raid setup, but I want separate ones for that offsite storage incase.I only want to store photos and videos, would this do the job or shall I get a SSD instead?
Its fine.
I've always used these HDD and add everyone mentioned they die out after every 2-3 years.
So are these SSD ones more reliable?
Best equivalent in SSD send to be this for $175 and 2tb storage: https://amzn.asia/d/4TfoL2d
SSD is generally more reliable and has longer lifespan than HDD
Agreed. There's a reason these old dinosaurs are called "spinning rust". And one simple knock while running can kill them. Short cable, long cable, doesn't matter. Better than the old (desktop) external drives, but still old fashioned.
Expired deal, anyway.Some spud is negging us, but nothing to say. That says it all, really.
I got $109 for WD 4TB in Amazon Black Friday sale
beigehornet on 17/11/2023 - 10:20 Comment score below threshold.