Is This A Good Deal (Seagate 7E8 4TB) ?

[hugoballs]

I was searching around for inexpensive hard drives and I stumbled upon this: Dell Exos 7E8 4TB SAS (ebay) for £69/drive.
Are these a good deal? The price seems too good to be true when compared to other similar used or "seller refurbished" drives.

Out of interest, do they or should they have any warranty? Seagate says that it's Dell's responsibility and the number/QR code of the drive shown in the image yields nothing on Dell's support site (idk if it should. maybe you need a service tag?). Hopefully somebody more knowledgeable than me knows the answer.

 

[Alexdi]

Can't speak to that one, but I'm seeing 6TB SAS drives on EBay US for $80 or less.

 

[hugoballs]

Yeh thanks for pointing that out, unfortunately I can't find anything comparable in Europe.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

I was searching around for inexpensive hard drives and I stumbled upon this: Dell Exos 7E8 4TB SAS (ebay) for £69/drive.
Are these a good deal? The price seems too good to be true when compared to other similar used or "seller refurbished" drives.

It depends on what you need them for. I wouldn't be looking to purchase additional 3.5" 4TB drives at this point in time - too little capacity for the space / power used.

You know that these are SAS drives and can't be hooked up to a motherboard SATA port, right? They need a SAS controller. That particular model number is likely a custom-for-Dell part - it doesn't show up in any searches of Seagate's web site.

Out of interest, do they or should they have any warranty? Seagate says that it's Dell's responsibility and the number/QR code of the drive shown in the image yields nothing on Dell's support site (idk if it should. maybe you need a service tag?). Hopefully somebody more knowledgeable than me knows the answer.

No warranty from Seagate or Dell. You're on your own. Warranty claims on OEM drives like this are handled by the OEM (Dell) in exchange for favorable pricing from the manufacturer. And Dell doesn't want to lose money giving you a replacement drive for something you didn't buy from them - the only way you could get coverage is if you bought an entire system and were able to get Dell to transfer the system warranty over.

 

[hugoballs]

I wouldn't be looking to purchase additional 3.5" 4TB drives at this point in time - too little capacity for the space / power used.

Unfortunately I'm on a tight budget of about £500 max., so I can't afford anything larger ATM. At this point I'm torn between just getting two drives and mirroring them, leaving space for expansion later. If anyone has any suggestions for where to get drives within my budget, bearing in mind that I'm in Europe, then I would greatly appreciate it.

You know that these are SAS drives and can't be hooked up to a motherboard SATA port, right?

Yes, I have an an LSI 9207-8i that I got for free. After reading the compatibility sheet (under "Documentation"), I understand that these drives should be compatible since they have 512 bytes per sector (source) All I would need is a an SFF-8087 to 4 * SFF-8482 connector and enough SATA or Molex (depending on the cable) power connectors from my PSU.

Shame about the warranty, but if the price is low enough then I think it's worth losing it.