7k3000 or 7k4000 - My options

[5teve]

Well its really a wanted to buy, but looking for options of purchasing these from the US as there are so many more places to get them from. I'm hesitant to buy them from Newegg as their packaging of drives is somewhat dubious, probably causing more DOA's than anything, and goharddrive require the goods to be shipped to the billing address.

Any suggestions of a good supply(ier) of the 2 or 3 tb 7k3000 or 7k4000 ultrastar drives at a good price? I'm after 8 units

My supplier in Aus looks like they have let me down as I had 8 on order, they confirmed that they were held for me several times and then just as my motherboard has arrived in stock, they now tell me they only have 5 available for the order.. not happy as you may guess...

Thanks in advance

Steve O

 

[seang86s]

I usually buy these from bhphotovideo.com when they go on sale (check www.slickdeals.net for sale leads). They sell the retail packed drives so they come in hitachi's box with the plastic inserts, cable and screws. B&H then puts them in a shipping box with bubblewrap all around. I got 8 of the NAS drives more than year ago and they have been running with no failures for awhile now.

I live in NJ so I avoid the tax (Amazon charges tax in NY/NJ and Newegg does for NJ) and it takes one day to get here. I know that bit may not help you much in Aus but perhaps someone else in the states may find it useful.

Microcenter.com may also be worthy of checking. Their B&M usually has tons of retail packed drives on the shelves although their price may be slightly higher. They have stores in several states (including NY and NJ) so taxes will apply there. Not sure if you're shipping direct to AUS or to a US address and then taking the hop over to you.

 

[5teve]

Thanks Sean

Have been looking at bh photo as I buy my camera gear from there... There seems to be a few old pulls on ebay too at very low prices which are interesting.

Apologies I didn't add ultrastar to the description..

Will check out the other sites too thanks

Steve

 

[5teve]

OK I have now heard from my supplier who have confirmed that the 7k3000 ultrastar 2tb drives are no longer available to them, and they only have 4 (of the 8 originally ordered and held for me) in stock that are sealed. They have offered me 4 additional 7k4000 Ultrastar 2tb drives at a premium of $25aud per drive for the remaining 4 (7k3000 @ 159aud and 7k4000 @ 185aud. As i am using these in a raid 6 array im not sure about mixing the 2 types as 7k3000 are 512b format and the 7k4000 are 4k format. Do you think it will make a difference or cause any issues?

My other option (which I am tempted to do just because they have said the 8 drives were held all along) is to cancel the order and source the drives from the US. An ebay listing has them for $119usd (about 156aud) each except they are the 3tb 7k3000 ultrastar drives when questioned about their origin the reply was:-

The drives for this listing are considered New Bulk which is stated in the listing. New Bulk consist of OEM and Data Center Excess drives, as well as Server Pulls. The drives will have some hours mostly due to testing.

Or can go 2tb 7k4000 for 119usd each plus delivery of about 90usd for the 8 drives.

Obviously warranty for local is easier, plus I get to write them off tax wise, whereas Imports I cannot do this, or service the warranty easily...

I'm kind of torn as to which way to jump.. what do you reckon?

Steve

 

[mrkrad]

Yeah the older 512b ultrastar's are far easier to deal with with older controllers. I wouldn't mix the two honestly. the 4096 emulation mode gives issues to some controllers that are older!

 

[5teve]

I'm looking at throwing these on a P420 controller if it will work on the motherboard (Asrock c226ws) so not sure how well that will work with mixed formats... But I'd like to avoid potential issues later on..

Thanks for your thoughts...

Steve