4TB+ large disk price review
For my personal backups, I am now looking at 4TB+ single-disk long-term storage. I currently have 3.5TB of offline storage, split in two disks: this is rather inconvenient as I need to plug both in a toaster-like SATA enclosure which gathers dusts and performs like crap. Now I'm looking at hosting offline backups at a friend's place so I need to store everything in a single drive, to save space.
This means I need at least 4TB of storage, and those needs are going to continuously expand in the future. Since this is going to be offsite, swapping the drive isn't really convenient (especially because syncing all that data takes a long time), so I figured I would also look at more than 4 TB.
So I built those neat little tables. I took the prices from Newegg.ca or Newegg.com as a fallback when the item wasn't available in Canada. I used to order from NCIX because it was "more" local, but they unfortunately went bankrupt and in the worse possible way: the website is still up and you can order stuff, but those orders never ship. Sad to see a 20-year old institution go out like that; I blame Jeff Bezos.
I also used failure rate figures from the latest Backblaze review, although those should always be taken with a grain of salt. For example, the apparently stellar 0.00% failure rates are all on sample sizes too small to be statistically significant (<100 drives).
All prices are in CAD, sometimes after conversion from USD
for items that are not on newegg.ca, as of today.
8TB
| Brand | Model | Price | $/TB | fail% | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HGST | 0S04012 | 280$ | 35$ | N/A | |
| Seagate | ST8000NM0055 | 320$ | 40$ | 1.04% | |
| WD | WD80EZFX | 364$ | 46$ | N/A | |
| Seagate | ST8000DM002 | 380$ | 48$ | 0.72% | |
| HGST | HUH728080ALE600 | 791$ | 99$ | 0.00% |
6TB
| Brand | Model | Price | $/TB | fail% | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HGST | 0S04007 | 220$ | 37$ | N/A | |
| Seagate | ST6000DX000 | ~222$ | 56$ | 0.42% | not on .ca, refurbished |
| Seagate | ST6000AS0002 | 230$ | 38$ | N/A | |
| WD | WD60EFRX | 280$ | 47$ | 1.80% | |
| Seagate | STBD6000100 | 343$ | 58$ | N/A |
4TB
| Brand | Model | Price | $/TB | fail% | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate | ST4000DM004 | 125$ | 31$ | N/A | |
| Seagate | ST4000DM000 | 150$ | 38$ | 3.28% | |
| WD | WD40EFRX | 155$ | 39$ | 0.00% | |
| HGST | HMS5C4040BLE640 | ~242$ | 61$ | 0.36% | not on .ca |
| Toshiba | MB04ABA400V | ~300$ | 74$ | 0.00% | not on .ca |
Conclusion
Cheapest per TB costs seem to be in the 4TB range, but the 8TB HGST comes really close. Reliabilty for this drive could be an issue, however - I can't explain why it is so cheap compared to other devices... But I guess we'll see where it goes as I'll just order the darn thing and try it out.
A fellow Debian developer wondered at how Canada could be so backwards to not have a site like Geizhals.eu, where you have detailed stats like price per TB. Turns out we have one after all, pcpartpicker.com. The problem is, as usual, Canadians... "We're not even a real country anyway (another way to see that).
I also got a Seagate IronWolf ST8000VN0022 because (a) it actually ships from Newegg in Canada instead of a reseller in the US (so one less trip overall which means less delays and gaz waste) and (b) I don't trust that cheap HGST device. Turns out to about 39$/TB which is pretty close to par...