OW has it for $189, so you can price beat and get a further 5% off. Bringing it down to about $156.75.
Could also price match at JB and use the current Ultimate Gift Card 20x flybuys points deal and get approx $15 back as flybuys dollars. There is a JB perks coupon at the moment also, spend $300 get $30 off. I was buying 2 hard drives, so I used this along with the Ultimate Gift Card deal.
Yeah it's not shuckable. I had my reasons to buy it, but yeah there is probably cheaper per TB options, especially if you wait til BF.
I paid $189 for the 5tb version back in May (end of tax time deal) where JB Hifi sells that one for $214. Not too sure how reliable the 4tb variants of these drives are these days. Four years ago I read that quite a few of those drives had a high failure rate (right around the time I purchased one as well lol. But it still works today). On an unrelated WD HD anecdote - I purchased a WD Black 2TB game drive some years ago, still works as a drive that I use to play videos off of (via the Nvidia shield or directly through my tv's usb port). When I connect it to laptops and pcs to copy from - all but one still reads/writes to it normally… but one (my latest W11 laptop) rejects it. Google says it's a sign of immenient HDD failure….. and it may well be, but I've still been reading/writing to it on the other systems for months now.
4TB (not 5TB), SMR, mechanical drive, fixed USB micro-B connector (not type C), likely glass-substrate platter (most 2.5" drives have glass platters that shatter on heavy impact).
At this price you can definitely get 1TB portable SSDs, or 2TB ones if there are deals. Though HDDs are still beneficial if you need long-term storage (NANDs could lose charge over a few years of time).
I remember when these before COVID were going for around $130 every day. Those were the days.
I paid $95 for the 4tb back then!
Damn you were lucky.
These SMR drives are super slow for random access, but they're quite nice for simple cold backups.
How good for cold backup though? 10 years worthy?
Just have two to back up the same things, they can't fail at the same time
Yes they can & have.
@Laziofogna: Yep. So i had a file system corruption on one HDD. The second, which would only even get written to (maybe read once a year) died about 1.5 hours into read. Both drives were unrecoverable.
Generally why IT people say you need 3 copies.
Nah, definitely not expecting it to be that good. Using an HDD means I wouldn't have to worry about NAND flash discharging and losing data when not being powered up for too long. Haven't ever had it happen to me, but it is technically possible.
Can you recommend a faster one? I’m trying to figure out how to differentiate/identify a slow usb drive from a (relatively) faster one that is not an SSD.
Problem for USB flash drives is that they usually use NANDs that are binned worse than proper SSDs. Also depends on the controller they use, they may not have features like wear levelling that prolongs that prolongs the lifespan.
Of course there are SSDs designed to look like a flash drive, but they are relatively pricey. Such as the well known Sandisk CZ80/CZ88/CZ880 series. If you need something small, just go with a CZ880 (or whatever new in the same series).
Most basic flashdrives on the market are rubbish these days, don't bother. An SSD based flashdrive is the way to go if you want good performance, like the DataTraveler Max or ESD310C. Both of these have relatively modern controller with a native USB interface, and they will probably get less hot than older products in this category, but overall they'll still have thermal throttling issues due to the tiny size. If size isn't a concern, most of the larger options will get much less hot, like the Kingston XS1000 or Samsung T5/T7.
What would be a better option for actually using and not a backup? Just an SSD? Samsung T7?
I'd recommend looking into the Kingston XS1000, XS2000, Transcend ESD310C or similar drives with a controller that has a native USB interface. Compared to the external nvme bridge solutions, they consume roughly half the power, which means they get a lot less hot and usually don't run into thermal throttling after sustained writes. I use the XS1000 and the T7 regularly, the T7 also does very well in terms of thermals but it's very expensive.
Does anyone know how to convert USB to USB-C for this drive? I bought an adapter, but it doesn't support data transfer. I want to use it with an iPhone.
I bought this one to use on a Mac https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/bonelk-long-life-usb-c-to…
But I'm not sure an iPhone can provide enough power to spin the drive?
Seems to be quite expensive. I would expect to get a 5TB portable HDD for this price.
(Also for those that may ask, I don't think this is shuckable - which doesn't matter to me except if it crashes to assist with data recover).