Lowest 18 TB prices that I could find -- Black Friday

All are external (internal 18 TB drives were more costly).

Best Buy: $299.99
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-18tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/6427995.p?skuId=6427995

However, none are available in my area for pickup, nor for shipping. I do not understand why “shipping” should have a limited area (domestically). So this sale price has no meaning – unless Best Buy actually does have them available somewhere.

B&H Photo Video: $299.99 (after coupon is applied – happens automatically at checkout)
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1604997-REG/wd_wdbwlg0180hbk_nesn_wd_elements_desktop_18tb.html

There is a limit of 2 per order. But I suspect that you can just place an order, and then repeat, if you want more than 2.

Again, the advertised price is $339.99 (perhaps they are not allowed to advertise below that price, due to legal mumbo-jumbo with WD?). But at checkout, you pay $299.99

I am a bit disappointed. I was expecting to see better deals, today.

Perhaps Cyber Monday will be better. But I am not holding my breath.

Cheers!

2 Likes

Keep refreshing that page often and hopefully you will be able to purchase it, as it looks like BB is throttling purchases.

1 Like

I do not know the difference (reliability, speed, power consumption, etc), between the Best Buy WD EasyStore drives vs the B&H WD Elements drives. But I suspect that the two drives are very similar.

So due to Best Buy showing none available, I just purchased the ones from B&H. They ship nation-wide.

Also, B&H is very good with returns. I recently had a DOA, and they took it back without hesitation. They paid for the return shipping, too. And they answer their phones.

I am not suggesting that Best Buy would be different, for a return. I never returned anything to them. I suspect that they would be customer friendly, too.

Unless there is a reason that the Best Buy WD Easy Store drives are better in some way, it seems unnecessary to struggle with their site.

1 Like

One thing about both of those drives is that WD added a 3.3V handling to those drives to “deter” people from shucking them. It is basically a nuisance from SATA protocol point of view (same can be accomplished by using data pins). Also, that 3.3V doesn’t serve any other purposes, but keeping the drive off (if the voltage is present).

There are two easy ways to disable it: 1. try to put some tape over pin 3 (I think) of POWER connector, 2. cut the 5th wire from SATA power cable (or use 4 pin Molex cable in front of SATA power cable). The second option (cut/molex) is easier to do.

Although, 2 years warranty is kind of a bit of concern. Manufactures set warranties based on the expected MTBF times. Having such a short warranty can be understood as such HD is really a low end one, and this is a concern for chia. Another explanation could be that due to higher operating temps (due to a tight enclosure) or expected banging on it those drives can die prematurely. If the second thing is the reason, it may be not that serious problems, as long as the drive is handled right.

Yes, they are likely lower end drives – performance wise. Reliability wise? Maybe.
But I suspect that WD would not want a reputation of having unreliable drives.

Before Chia, I have owned numerous drives (internal and external). Only one SATA SSD gave me trouble (would lose its partition, and that was after 10 years of use) and one external drive stopped responding.

I use clean power, via an uninterruptible power supply (UPS, with sine wave output), for all of my electronics, and I believe that that helps, immeasurably. Aside from the above two mentioned drive failure issues, I have never had a single electronic item ever fail on me, since I have be using UPSs to feed them power.

Also, I believe that, for example, drives that are briefly turned on, to do a backup, and then turned off for power savings, will not last as long as drives that remain spinning 24/7/365 (which is the case with Chia).

Lastly, I have fans blowing on my drives. I suspect that many people do not. Heat is the kryptonite of hard drives (and just about any mechanical or electronic equipment). So by keeping my drives cool, fed clean power, and always on, I expect them to last far beyond their warranty periods.

If they start to die after two years, then that will be a major issue. Not only for money down the drain, but the loss of the plots, too.

I hear you. I am also a long time WD user. I had a couple of their drives die on me (almost die - SMART was really bad), but at that time (long time ago) their RMA was a breeze (I gave them my CC, they shipped replacement the same day or so, once I got it, I xfred all the data from the old to the new, and shipped them cleaned up old drive). Unfortunately, last year they took 3-4 months to ship me Red replacement for my RAID array.

Still, 2 years warranty is just 2 years warranty. Is it really worth to buy such drive (knowing that it may be inferior), or rather spend $40-60 more for their Ultrastar (that you know will last “forever”). Also, Seagate’s USB drives (over 12-14 TB ??) are EXOS (whatever that is worth, as I am not really a fan of Seagate), so maybe that is another option worth to consider.

WD’s return process is abysmal. On a scale of 1 to 10, it is a 1. I am not exaggerating.
The only way for it to be worse is if they would tell the customer to go eff themselves.

Earlier this year, I had to return two G-Drives (a WD brand), and it took months, and it required my constant attention, in calling them and e-mailing them.

Every part of their warranty process was broken, or intentionally designed to thwart returns. A percentage of people will either not have the time or the patients to deal with it, and just give up.

If I were purchasing only 1 drive, or a few drives, for general use, I would use Seagate drives. Earlier this year, I had to return two Seagate drives, and Seagate made it a breeze. But their drives are significantly more costly.

My budget is tight, so I am rolling the dice with my WD purchases, because I cannot afford paying between $50 to $100 extra for the Seagate drives.

By the way, I had previously posted that by using a UPS to feed power to my drives, that my drives do not fail. And in this post, I am reporting some failures.

These failures were drives that crapped out within 2 or 3 days. They were simply faulty from the factory. Drives that do not fail within the first week will probably last for the long haul.

Good point, all computer equipment should be on an UPS to prevent power surges!!!

1 Like

It is more than only surges.

Quality UPS’s, the ones with voltage regulation (or the extreme high-end, duel conversion models), also protect from low voltages.

Low power is also an issue, and it causes electronics to heat up and fail.

A quality UPS will continue to feed connected equipment the proper voltage, within its operating design limits, no matter the incoming voltage from the power grid. If the UPS is not able to compensate for a low voltage situation, then it will switch to its batteries.

Cheap UPS’s are a bucket of batteries.
They offer some surge suppression (similar to a power strip), and they will go to battery power during a power outage. That’s it.

And the cheap USP’s will probably produce a square wave form, when on battery power. Some equipment might have an issue with a square wave. Some UPS’s will produce a stepped sine wave, when on battery power, which is probably good enough for most equipment.

Ideally, you want your UPS to output a pure sine wave, when it is on battery power, and you want your UPS to compensate for minor power fluctuations, without having to switch to battery power. Your goal being that your connected equipment sees 100% sine wave power at the proper voltage, no matter what is happening on the public power grid.

Cheers!

just bought external 8TB SSD from internet. looks ok so far.

1 Like

Its a shame that millions of people have no UPS at all connected to their equipment for years. One has to do a little research on the product.

1 Like

@drhicom I used to have to replace my microwave oven, every few years.

Now I am not going to spend hundreds of dollars on a UPS that is capable of running a microwave oven, and replace its expensive batteries every ~5 years.

But I took ownership of a high-end Tripp Lite line conditioner, from a relative that passed away, and use it to keep power issues from affecting my microwave oven.

It has been 10+ years, and my microwave oven runs like new.

Even if microwave ovens were $5, it just plain sucks when it dies, and you have to go shopping for one that fits your needs.

The line conditioner periodically makes clicking noises, when it goes into auto voltage regulation (compensating for bad power), and its lights indicate what it is correcting. I am sure that it is the reason my microwave oven has survived all of these years.

These products work (well, the better ones do).

The $29 power strip, from Home Depot, that declares itself as a surge protector, does little more than nothing. And their metal oxide varistor (MOV), the part that absorbs surges, wears out after taking a few hits – because they are cheap – and you will not be able to tell that it is no longer protecting your equipment.

Quality MOVs that come with quality power strips (and quality UPSs) are able to absorb power surges for years.

So it stands to reason that my computers virtually never have hardware failures, because I use quality UPS’s to keep them safe from issues on the public power grid.

Anyone that has important electronics should never keep them connected directly to their power outlets. It just is not safe.

This is the Tripp Lite model that I have (not exactly, but similar) for my microwave oven:

Just a small question, what type of micro waves units were you buying and what part of the country do you live with nasty power spikes like that?

I used to live in upstate NY, which is where most of the power issues were happening, and stopped happening after I started using power protection.

Now I live in central NJ. But since I use power protection from day-1, I can’t really know if the power here is any better.

I am currently using a GE counter-top model microwave oven. I do not remember which ones I used when I lived in NY.

The power in NY was also burning out my TVs (this is pre flat-screen days). That also stopped, once I used power protection.

1 Like

I used to live in Burlington County, 35 minutes from Philly and moved to FL in 1982.

1 Like

The 18 TB Western Digital Easy Store USB drives that Best Buy started advertising, on Thanksgiving Day, for $299.99 was deceptive click-bait.

Best Buy never had them available at that price.
I checked two or three times, every day. None available.

I called Best Buy, Monday afternoon (11/29/2021), and I was told that none were in stock.
I registered my complaint that it is false advertising, to quote a price and never have any for sale at that price.

I asked for a rain-check, on the sale price. That, of course, went nowhere.

I just now checked, again, and they have the drives in stock. In fact, you can add 5 to your cart. And the drives are available at the local stores, too.

And they also raised their price.
So they had them all along, and simply refused to sell them at their advertised sale price.

Shame on Best Buy. I thought that they were a reputable company.

3 Likes

Can confirm - I visited lots of BB’s over the last weekend and saw plenty of the 14tb drives almost all the way up to yesterday but never saw a single 16tb or 18tb in physical form anywhere. To be fair, when I went this morning to exchange a defective 14tb drive, I didn’t see any on the shelves either at least at that one.

When I wrote that the local stores now have them (now that they raised the price), I did not actually visit the stores.

But when you go to purchase one of the 18 TB drives, Best Buy is offering a choice of shipping or local pick-up. And it was allowing me to choose several different stores. So that meant that those stores would have to have them, in order for the customer to pick them up at those stores.

I did not complete the purchase, due to the raised price. I just went through the motions, to confirm that they have the drives in quantity, and were simply refusing to sell them when they had their sale price.

At the check-out part of the on-line purchase transaction, I removed the drives from my cart. But I learned what I needed to know.

1 Like

Ah gotcha - well at least in my area, it looks like the site currently shows the 18tb as “not available” in all stores and I can’t even order it for pickup or delivery! If I click on it, it still won’t even let me add to cart. I can buy the 16tb for “pickup on Dec 7” so there are no local stores that have it in stock either. Very weird…

1 Like