Marketplace
This post contains affiliate links. OzBargain might earn commissions when you click through and make purchases. Please see this page for more information.
Looks to be a good price? Can't see cheaper elsewhere?
WD Elements 20TB External Desktop Hard Drive $679 Delivered @ Amazon AU
72
BargainHunterWA on 26/03/2025 - 09:46 amazon.com.au (191 clicks)
Last edited 26/03/2025 - 09:52 by 1 other user
Last edited 26/03/2025 - 09:52 by 1 other user
Price History at 
CamelCamelCamel.
CamelCamelCamel.Related Stores
Comments
$33.95 per TB is pretty expensive for an WD Elements Portable Drive.
For Ozbargainers around $25 per TB is acceptable.
Also the 20TB WD Elements drive is only USD$327 / AUD$525 on Amazon US. which i believe is the lowest at the momentThis has been 480 before under a different seller.
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/823059
in fact this deal at a different price is still cheaper on Newegg
No
That's a Seagate. No thanks. I prefer the WD Elements when it is larger than 18TB because the drives inside look like white label Ultrastar HC555 helium-filled drives.
LOL a seagate? good luck with that
Are HDDs ever going to get normal prices????????
I was discussing this with my colleague last night. HDD prices seem to be stagnate with not much change. Things going on in US may not help pricing here as exchange rates have been more volatile.
We have had to purchase used SAS drives as a coping mechanism until prices of new drives drop to a reasonable level.
We really haven't had a good proper deal since:
Super bummed I wasn’t a datahoarder back then and didn’t know what I was missing…
Now want 4x16-18TB hdd’s but super hard to stomach those costs…
Yeah, cost me nearly $1000 for my 4x 16TB recently.
They're up there in price atm.
Still gonna grab another 2 when they're back in stock.
@MasterScythe: So you got the recent WD “refurbished” drives I guess?
That deal was new as well, not 2-3 year old drives…
@Larsson: Refurbished? No. I buy Server Pulls, and not really recent; I've been buying them for about 4~6 years now from EastDigital, yes.
Working in a storage mangement role, the bellcurve of RMA requirements very quickly drops off after a year, and nearly halts at the two years of drive use.
I wouldn't risk running multiple new drives myself as I'm only running RaidZ2 (so only 2 drive redundancy on my main array), so I don't have nearly enough redundancy to risk 6x new spinners, or time to spend 3 years aging them out pair by pair before expanding.These used 18 month old drives I find much more favorable. I value reliability much higher than NIB.
They have full smart data and pass both Conveyance and Long (every block) SMART tests. Along with PC-3000 reporting head accuracy as near perfect (expected for enterprise drives).Basically, they're often saving me almost 50% while doing the first years worth of hard paranoid work (excessively monitoring) for me.
What's not to love?
@MasterScythe: Do you buy direct from EastDigita or through eBay?
I’m after a decent sized SATA drive to consolidate all my stuff, why is this one so cheap?
https://east-digital.myshopify.com/products/wd-ultrastar-wuh…
Or do you recommend something else is that size range?
Thanks.
@Grok: I've purchased both ways.
Their website is dodgy looking blank template as all hell, but I've done more than 7 orders via it now, and they all arrived, and were all packaged well enough to survive a nuke.
@MasterScythe: These (the one the other person linked above) are server pulls though, and they specifically say it’s “cosmetically perfect” did you buy any of those? How many hours did they have on them?
@Larsson: Yes, I've bought several dozen drives through them; I'm the 'server guy' in my friend group, so I've built half a dozen servers outside of work at this point (and proably multiple dozens at work…)
They had roughly 16k on the 14TBs I recieved, one batch was 18k. So roughly 2 years, as expected.
@MasterScythe: Awesome! Well I am thinking 16TBx4 and create a raidz1 vdev. For a home server with media I think that’s good enough in terms of risk, right?
Also even if you go for the “Factory Refurbished” from east digital, they are just the same mining used drives with their SMART data rolled back to zero, isn’t it?
Also in between east digital sever pulls HC550 16TB (https://east-digital.myshopify.com/products/wd-wuh721816ale6…) and Neology’s “rectified” Exos X18 16TB (https://neology.com.au/products/r-st16000nm000j-4). What do you think?
@Larsson: I have no exprience with neology.
a recertified drive is one that was sent back to the manufacturer for repair, typically something like a board swap, or a re-pressurise if there was a helium leak. They'll have 'white labels' on them if they're recertified.
Judging from the company stickers on the drives, and the smart data, none of mine have been from mining locations.
Only one type of HDD mining was popular, Chia, and it was popular for such a short time compared to how often HDD's get cycled out by megacorporations, you'd have to be very unlucky to get a 'mining drive'.
@MasterScythe: Ah yeah okay I might be more up to date on this than you are. Most “rectified” and “new” drives are mining drives. If you bought from east digital you’ll notice there is not etched “rectified” on the drives.
Seagate started and investigation recently:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1il1kyb/seagat…East digital was one of the offenders I believe. The recently emptied out their entire “new” section because of this. If you look at their website there is no seagate left there. Hardly anything. Pretty obvious they were doing this and got caught.
Don’t get me wrong. I have 5 drives from them and they all work just fine years after, so you just have to know the real risk you are taking I guess…
@Larsson: You probably are, there.
I had heard of that controversy, but due to my professional life leaning heavily on RMA statistics (which you can most easily check thanks to backblaze making their stats public, not that I work there, just that most data centres keep that hush), we've never (last 10 years or so) used Seagate drives - this trickled down into my personal life too.The HC5X0 series has been so absolutely flawless that I can't think of any reason I'd not opt for them, other than price.
That price factor is likely a saving grace.
Chia relied on bulk storage, whether you had the higest performance WD drive, or the most entry level 'other brand' didn't make a whole pile of difference - ergo the 'cheaper when new' brands are likely more at risk of being mined on.My SMART has always arrived in tact, and 'logical'.
With that said, personal opinion - but if you've worked in a large organisation, especially a multinational (ergo multi timezone), I'm not convinced that the primarily 'write once-ish read many' aspect of Chia mining is realistically more intense than a few thousand users smashing databases.
Used HOME grade drives? 100% on your side, if it's mined on, they're not rated for 24/7 full speed workloads. But add in the rotational vibration sensors and such of enterprise drives and I'm really not bothered by a HDD being used in a way the manufacturer happily warrants.
normal prices????????
Ignoring stock-clearances & discounting, current retail-prices is due to,
1.Covid-19, is anything cheaper ?
2.Technology &/or cost of production have plateau, https://www.technologyreview.com/2007/10/10/223576/hard-driv…Look @ where your tech-goods are being made…low-labour-cost countries with lots of available workers ? As a guide research where Nike made their PREMIUM shoes over the last 3 decade.
The price is high now. 2 years ago, the 18TB Elements was $446 during the Black Friday sales. That made it $24.77 per TB
Huge boom in demand because AI data centres have spent billions on hard drives.
https://www.amazon.com.au/TEKERA-Enclosure-Aluminum-External…
Something like that (ignore the 'up to' stuff, thats just the biggest drive at time of manufacturing), plus…
https://east-digital.myshopify.com/products/seagate-exos-st2…
Something like that.$611 - $68 cheaper, aluminium case so will run cooler, enterprise quality non-SMR HDD, 22TB instead of 20TB.
Prefer the WD over the Seagate in the Expansion series.. Seagate I do like the portable drives.. Also something with AU Plug and AU Store given it is a powered product. Cost of storage seems to have gone north the last 18 months fluctuating more like a commodity than something that will continuously get cheaper YOY.
For the comment about 2023 pricing HDD's look to have risen some 40-60% over the past 2 years. You would have to compare it to deals available now/last 3 months!
Wondering what's this used for?
Storing linux distros.
Its an external HDD, for storing files.
Most would use this as an off site backup.pictures and videos of corn.
Popcorn and cornflakes take a lot of space because they are all expanded compared to corn kernels.
You can put them in a sealable bag, but it's always harder to access your corn when it's zipped.
Wow up to 20TB now. I still have the old 500GB ones haha. Nice feedback in the comments though.. I've been out of touch with how much the cost should be per TB these days.
I have a Toshiba 1GB drive from 1996 or so, got a lot of bad sectors though.
It would be good if $20/GB nowI ran my old 40GB Quantum Fireball AS (PATA) from 2000. Great made in Japan drive. The bearings were so grindy sounding, but all my data was still there and I could copy it all out without issues. I also had an old WD drive from that period, and unfortunately, it started having read errors as I was copying the data out.
too expensive, you can get 18TB WD Gold/HC pulls for a lot less.
Got link to those new drives? I can't find WD Gold/HC drives for much cheaper.
Agreed.
I don't have time to properly age drives in my home life.
Pulls are worth their weight in gold.
I just bought two of these 20TB WD Red Pro's yesterday for $735 a pop. A bit more expensive but better drives and about as cheap as it's going to get for those pro drives.
This price is crap, I paid $428AUD for this exact drive at the end of last year.
Prices are insane now hey, paid $384AUD for the 18TB version in 2022.
with that price, you should buy the NAS specific drive
Since when is $33.95/tb a good price?
Take a look at 20TB tag, first page has nothing over $600 except for this deal lol