Best Buy - 18TB Easystore on sale for $199.99

I have about a dozen dead wd white labels, all clicked/faulted right around the 3-5 year mark. (Out of 41 disks across 3 servers).
Looking back, the small discount from shucking was not worth it in long run. These are subpar drives.
Just my personal two cents.
- 2/8 for me at about the 5 year mark.
- I have three that don’t even power around anymore for no reason when I can’t figure out why
- This is all anecdotal evidence.
  I’ve got 8-8TB, 8-12TB, and 3-14TB drives (all white label shucks) bought between 7yrs ago and now. The 8TBs were all bought over 5yrs and no failures. I’ve had 1 -12TB die recently, it was at the 3yr mark.
- I have 8 WD whitelabels that are all around 5 years old. None dead yet but I may have just gotten lucky so far. I'm going to buy 2 of these to start replacing the old ones.
- Yeah before shucking got popular the white labels were helium filled and the 14tb and 10tb drives required the 3 pin tape mod on all my evga and Corsair psus. I won’t be buying wd to shuck again. I’ve had good luck with seagate expansion drives which are actually labeled exos or ironwolfs which are supported with firmware updates from seagate. Warranty claims also isn’t an issue I worry about with seagate.
  I’m coming up to the 4 year mark on my wd white labels and they’re a hassle.
- I have 2x8TB, 2x10TB 2x12TB, 2x18TB and 14TB, all shucked. No issues. the 8TB's are at 6 years powered on too.
- Honestly at this point I'm buying used drives. I have redundancy anyway, and if I get a 50% discount for buying used and have to buy 10% more drives for extra redundancy, that still comes up Milhouse.
- If you bought those all at once, sounds like a bad manufacturing batch.
- So for someone who currently relies on external drives, you wouldn't recommend this? Would that be all WD easystores or just the 18tb? I've still got a ways to go before migrating to internals so I can't really afford much more than the $200 thus far
- I think you have environmental issues at play. That failure rate is incredibly abnormal.
  
  Agreed. Many of my shucks are over the 3 year mark with the oldest approaching 7 years, powered on 24/7 and never spun down. None show any signs of degradation
  
  I agree. 2x6tb, 2x10tb, 8x8 going strong for 6 years 24/7 operation now. All easy store shucks. I just installed 8 18tb from server parts deals in my new NAS as well no issues a few weeks in.
  
  By environmental issues do you mean the condition of where the hardrives are being stored? As in if heat is too high or too much humidity in the air around the machine?
- I've got 10 drives 5 8 tb going on 6 years and 5 14 tb going on 5 years had 1 8tb develop a bunch of write errors at around 5 years in imo they have been worth the money they have been running 24/7 in my main unraid server

Cleared out my store's three units.
Pairing this with 8TB SATA SSD for disaster proof backups. After twenty years, getting all my data in one place...
... Well, except the 20TB overflow. That backs up to my $279 20TB's. Which hook into BackBlaze. They had better appreciate the loyalty. The 28TB backups sure cost them a lot.
I'm just glad I don't have more. Then I'd have to set up a NAS and, ugh, I'm just working too hard to enjoy doing that these days.
Only hiccup so far is either my 8TB Samsung 870 QVO died or the enclosure, a whopping 30 minutes in. This is why I backup meticulously in (at least) three separate locales, plus encrypted cloud.

I bought two. One to give me room for another 900 movies on Plex and another to back them up. I should be good for awhile.

Setting up my first NAS (synology). This or recertified Exo for the same price and warranty?

Jealous in European.

Yooo thanks for the heads up bro!

Meanwhile the same 18TB is $499.99 CAD in Canada...
- nope it is 300$ while black friday

Don't need this... ok I'll buy just 1

so are these drives worth it? I mean the price is nice but is the quality worth it?

I'm interested but don't want something to die out. I suppose my other question is what is normal life expectancy if 4/5 years is considered bad.

bought 5, do I need them? no. Do I want them? Damn right.
- dawg cancel one for me they’re sold out now and i was waiting for payday :(
  
  i may join you with the fact that I'm waiting for mine to ship :(
- Better man than me…

Anyone know the exact model of drive?

FWIW WD is having a "buy 2 18TB Red Pro drives for $549" sale right now
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-red-pro-sata-hdd?sku=WD181KFGX
$25 extra for a Red Pro drive & not having shuck seems like a good value to me

Well, I got an Enterprise one (WUH721818ALE6L4) for US$ 245 shipped.

I really don't need to know this...
- yeah id get it for future data things but idk what i need it for
  
  Off site backup for your existing data, in case of disaster.
  Sorry to burn $200, but you'll thank me later when disaster strikes... living in an area where five neighboring cities all burnt to the ground in the course of 24 months (in the three worst wildfires in California history, back-to-back-to-back)... I have experience here.
- Welp, there's my Christmas budget... gone in one fell swoop. You might as well join... us... I think there is more than just me here... hello?

i bought one, will probably go buy another before the holiday season ends as long as it's still $200.

Is this a good deal?
- https://shucks.top/

It is somewhat tempting, but I bought six 18tb drives a few years ago. I have already replaced half of them. My nine 8tb drives have been much more reliable.

I'm in Canada. In August, I bought the WD easystore 14TB for $299 (Best Buy). The current "Black Friday" price is $399.
- it is 300$ for me for 18 tb easystore in my bestbuy
  
  Thanks, that's a good price.
- Real talk. If you live close enough to the border why not jump over here and buy some? Obviously you probably lose warranty coverage. And I do know there are limits to what you can bring back tax/duty free. I think it's like 800 cad or something. But If they're half price you'd think it's worth it.
- Err, the current black friday price for the 14tb WD easystore is $239 CAD at Bestbuy.ca and being matched by others and has been ongoing for several days. The thread for the deal is many pages long at redflagdeals.
  For those not in the know we have a website in Canada, extremely popular called redflagdeals. I don't think I am allowed to post the full link. Want to know about any consumer level deal as well as millions of other things - it is the place. The Hot Deals forum section is a daily staple in the lives of millions of Canadians.
- Wow I bought something there a few days ago and it was way cheaper than the current "sale" too. Pretty sleazy.

Ugh just bought two 14TB last weekend for the same price…
- I returned the 14TB I bought last weekend and bought this one today instead. I'd recommend doing the same!

i stopped shucking with last years 18 tb seagate exos from server parts deals for 194 each but still buy externals for back ups. are the 18 tb wd externals particularly unreliable? i have good luck with wd externals and i have a whole shelf of them. only 1 12 tb died with in 2 years and had to be rmaed. had some 8s and 3tbs die but at the 5 plus year mark and i was phasing them out anyway. i still have 3 tb elements that still worked last that checked

Idk I just get my drives with out enclosures and drives

Mine came in late last week. I hooked it up yesterday, and it is making an incessant clacking noise, so I'm returning it.

Do these have the 3.3v pin issue?

These are cmr right?

Ah man, I just bought a 8TB WD Elements for $99 and now this comes along!

Absolutely don't need it, but I want it.

About 275 Canadian Pesos for those keeping track. Wish we had the prices you guys south of the border seem to get!
In the past I've given up buying locally and instead bulk ordered drives in the US and shipping to a US address, then package-forwarding them over the border. Saved quite a lot, duties on HDDs aren't that high!

Just ordered 3. Thanks for the posting.

$11.11/TB, pretty screaming $/TB right there
- That's what I did first too haha 😂 anything below $13 is worth investigation!

Sigh, I just bought the 14tb last weekend. I could return it and buy this though…
- Return it?

Should I buy this or wait for a better deal? I was waiting until Black Friday season to get a new hard drive
- According to the Best Buy webpage, this IS the Black Friday deal.

aw shucks!

18 TB? Amateurs.

These hard drives look nice but let me save yall the trouble from using this as “backup storage”. Literally dealing with an older version of this external drive had to send out for data recovery. It never dropped nor received water damage. It just seems to have failed which I believe is on the PCB end of the drive, hoping so to recover it fairly easily. If you use it just do proper backup management on a cloud or something. I mean that’s a given a general better practice anyway. But these things seem to fail eventually so don’t rely on it

Some of the 10TB Easystores in my server are getting close to 5 years, so this is a convenient time to upgrade.

Very tempting, but the reliability is concerning me a lot

Where I live I can't even get a 4TB one for that price
I hate my country

Yes, but can you shuck them and use them? Or have they added the drive encryption to the interface?
And what specific model drives are they? (The HDD, not the easyStore)
-- DS

Hoohoo, $400 CAD up in the great white north. a whopping $50 off lol.
We had the 14TB one onsale for $240 last week which wasnt too bad.
- today the price is 300$ for easystore 18 tb
- That was a Seagate 14tb external, not a WD.
- Is there a https://shucks.top/ for Canada?

What a fucking deal!
if I didn't have a 16TB version, I might go for it.
I actually quite regret buying it earlier cause damnnnnn.

that is craaaaazy cheap

What drive is inside?

Are these ok for colder storage use that may get pulled and check maybe 2x a year?
Thinking about buying 2 and shucking them
- yes

how about stock picks that are about to grow well?

what's the noise level gonna be on these?
- Just finished using mine. Wasn't very loud in my opinion.