Newegg has the 4TB Seagate Backup Plus USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive (STCA4000100) for $189.99 - 15% off with promo code EMCXVWR98 = $161.49. Shipping is free.
Amazon has the same drive for the same price with free shipping.
I know from experience that these enclosures do not have helium in them. So you’ll have to keep looking, Christine.
Great price, still, despite the greater-than-2Tb compatibility issues. We avoid externals for that reason - we prefer compatibility across any system rather than remembering certain drives can only function on certain systems, and I don’t want to install the limit-bypass drivers.
One of our wholesalers sent out a survey to see what price-level we “needed” to kickstart our server sales again, and considering that we’re selling 5 or 6 drive RAID5s or 10s, we used those total price-points as a target. I hope they come thru.
I saw Toshiba had their 3Tb for $124 a few weekends ago, then some $129 Seagate and Hitachi prices followed. These are the first pre-Flood improvements - albeit for only a few days.
This market-segment doesn’t need a few cutesy sales, though - they need a solid price-drop - 3Tb in the $110-130 range, 4Tb in the $150-170 range. And push those 2Tb well under some $90 ceiling. For folks that ponder “having their own storage”, those prices will start HDD sales, I think.
With these prices, we can afford our own tethering lines, too… for those helium units, I mean.
I understand “Lakehurst” was not the name-of-choice for Cloud Servers, by the way. Odd, huh?
We are on Week 3 of our Toshiba RAID5 tests, by the way. We bought - literally - a baker’s dozen and set up two 6-drive RAID5s using those as media-servers, and we’ve pulled one drive out and inserted the 13th Purchase for a Drive Rebuild Process that went smoothly - albeit for 14 hours, a rather longer time than Seagates, Hitachi’s and WDs have required. That’s fine - I remember some 4-day rebuild times a few years ago!
I would love to see more competitors in the HDD market than just Seagate and WD.
Maybe Sony should consider buying/stealing the technology, and then claiming they invented it? I mean, since they’ve abandoned MiniDiscs and “have trouble” moving their products. Just re-acquire more products and slap the 4-letter name on it!
Looks like a good deal but I have vowed never to buy another worthless Seagate HD. I have had far too many of them die way before their time.
HDD makers are readying helium (or some other air) infused 5tb hard drives… apparently the “light air” keeps the drive heads reading the micro substrate securely w/ less friction aiding magnetic sensitivity-- That is until you open the drive & break that seal, lol. This adds higher RMA costs… can’t wait to see what MSRP ends up at… $299? more?
[QUOTE=UTR;2677667]Looks like a good deal but I have vowed never to buy another worthless Seagate HD. I have had far too many of them die way before their time.[/QUOTE]
+1
Also very bad experience with many Seagates.
I have had a Seagate 2.5 drive fail on me after 3 years of service. and i have had a WD HD fail on me after a year or so.
That being said, there is supposed to be a difference between drives made for seagate in China vs. Thailand. People would go out of their way to find the 3Tb drives made in Thailand. I did notice that the assembly of the 3Tb external drives was much more flimsy than the Thailand made externals. the few Seagate 4Tb drives I bought last ye
ar were all made in Thailand.
Have you ever worked out why any External would be cheaper than an Internal? We’ve seen this happen for a couple of years, I think, and the most cynical reason I can come up with is “Externals are filled with HDDs that had suspicious quality control checks, and vendors believe they’ll never have critical files like an internal does, so let the Externals fail, sure”.
Sometimes, the Externals might be the 5400rpm drives as well, but we’re seeing plenty of price variations where “Green” and “PowerFriendly” 5400s are priced higher than their 7200 variants.
[QUOTE=ChristineBCW;2678146]Have you ever worked out why any External would be cheaper than an Internal? We’ve seen this happen for a couple of years, I think, and the most cynical reason I can come up with is “Externals are filled with HDDs that had suspicious quality control checks, and vendors believe they’ll never have critical files like an internal does, so let the Externals fail, sure”.
Sometimes, the Externals might be the 5400rpm drives as well, but we’re seeing plenty of price variations where “Green” and “PowerFriendly” 5400s are priced higher than their 7200 variants.[/QUOTE]
I suppose they could be “dumping” their bad stock into externals. However my guess is that companies decide ahead of time how many externals to build and designate a cergain cost for them. i bet they let the internals fluctuate to potentially gain more money. but thats just a guess
I wonder if the “aftermarket / add-on market” quantities show Externals are outselling Internals? I’d be shocked if that was true BUT in the last few years, we’ve seen such a huge quantity of External Models from every vendor - and then some!
Have the HDD makers calculated that desktop add-on’s/aftermarkets are now heading towards one or two externals for every home, instead of users stuffing in add-on Internals?
I know a lot of XP Installs had difficulty getting a new Internal HDD detected. It always worked from a USB port, but sometimes the XP Hardware Wizard didn’t pop up. This was years ago, of course, but that sort of hardware add-on difficulty may have convinced many users to just accept externals as the Quick Easy Way.
That and so many brand-name retail cases SUCK for the casual maintenance issues - just peeling off sides can be an Engineering Degree Program… much less wedging a drive into foolishly crammed spaces.
At that point, “I only wanted one more extra drive” is an easy excuse to buy an External, especially when the price is cheaper AND it’s easier to install.
But Raw Drive Sales numbers are all I can get, and those aren’t ‘fair’ because those display units sold to OEMs for inclusion in Retail PC sales.
I just wonder if the after-market sales of HDDS is now 51% externals?
In my last build I put a WD 400gb drive in my system broken out from an external drive… but alas, it was ide… then it got replaced with a WD 1tb black (pre-flood mfg). For the last several years I’ve lamented about getting a bigger drive but can’t justify it… between having a blu ray drive for otpical backups, and streaming video on the internet there is no justification for having many TBs of “local storage” just yet (for me). Sure, there are some technofiles that would drop some coin ($600-$1k) on a local video server box…
Consumers are waiting for prices and innovation to resume their proper course before splurging… I know I am… then maybe we can see 5TB+ & 200+MB/sec transfer rates out the new SATA600 bus. I expect nothing less from HAMR drives to start-- hopefully they won’t be an overpriced disappointment.
Seagate’s delivering a new Internal 4Tb drive in the $210 range at the end of Feb, 2013, and it’s got marketing claims of being “Consumer NAS rated”, whatever that means. It’s either NAS or it’s not - but leave it to marketing folks to intro a lower-quality level while making it sound neat-o. (gag)
We’ve had solid performance from the new Toshiba 3Tb RAID5s (two 6-drives each) but it’s still only into the 6th week. “Wait a year and see how they are” is the best advice, but the best news of the $200 4Tb is what it might do for pricing for all other capacity pricings.
NewEgg offered an 80Gb IDE drive for $15. Refurb. Yeah. No kidding. 80Gb IDEs were made in ?? 2005 ?? 2003 ?? Are those refurbished, or merely dusted off? Sounds more like NewEgg’s been dumpster-diving.
But getting 1Tb into the $50 range and 2Tb into the $75, consistently, is great news for home-storage. As loud as the Cloud Advocates roar, I still think it’s hot air, especially when I see more research saying, “Users prefer to own disks…” and even more news about DRM attacks, hacks and lessened services.
Following that trend, I thought I saw a deal on a 4tb drive @ $149.99 on one of the “deal” sites. But these things disappear fast! (seagate external).
The more expensive drives are usually for those who want to build a storage raid/array-- most likely for video?
TMC, the so-called Enterprise drives should be focused on data-center usage when they’ll be running 28 hours a day, 8 days a week, and will be in rather constant action - either Stack 1 backing up Stack 2, or Location 8 replicating Location 15. Enterprise Drives are seldom ‘slack’. The durability of the mechanisms and any superior materiel are allocated for those.
In addition, part of their 100% greater selling price covers the manufacturer’s guarantee that he’ll have This Particular Model in stock “forever”. So if you have 800 Model 10s, and need one replacement 7 years later, the Manufacturer can open up his dusty vault and send the customer one for exact replacement. So part of that extra cost is future-izing a data-center’s capabilities without forcing massive hardware changes which perhaps a Model 11 might require.
By the way, I’m not sure why these “deals” disappear so fast. “I only have 8 to sell nationally…” might be one reason, when an on-line store might be used to selling 500 similar items a day. Maybe they think they’re being “nice” by making it a limited time.
Or are they testing the waters? “Let’s see how fast $150 units sell, and if they sell out in 2 hours of the allocated 24, let’s raise the price and see how fast $175 sells!” I suspect THIS attitude is always nearby.
I know that our rather stagnant hardware sales will enjoy maybe a 600-unit RAID5 sales in Month One if we’d get 3Tb drives in the $90-110 range consistently. But right now, they’re dipping pricing-toes in the water and cannot possibly be getting an accurate reading of ‘demand’. As long as they try tricks and time-limit schemes, they’ll never get accurate forecasts.
Today only 139.99
$149.99
Extra $10.00 savings w/ promo code EMCYTZT3134, ends 3/23
Free shipping.
So far gas prices seem to be in check… that could mean good news for tech prices to come down. Until a 4tb is around $110ish I wouldn’t be in the market for one. I’m waiting for SDXC cards to get a nice price chop-- they’re long overdue! 50 cents per GB would do…
I will buy a 4tb drive when I can get one for no more than I paid for my 2tb Seagate in November 2011, $109
Found this http://www.staples.com/Seagate-Expansion-3TB-Desktop-USB-30-External-Hard-Drive-Black/product_895616?PID=404255&storeId=10001&AID=10422268&SID=304172_desktop&cm_mmc=CJ--404255--404255-_-10422268&CID=AFF%253A404255%253A404255%253A10422268
Staples has the Seagate Expansion STBV3000100 3TB USB 3.0 External Desktop Hard Drive (2012 model) for $100 + $0.69 filler - $10 off with coupon code 81587 [Exp 4/7] = $91 with free shipping. More compact form factor than previous model; measures 1.48" (H) x 4.65" (W) x 7.07" (L).
+1 … always needing more space