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[nwboater]

With all the talk of falling hard drive prices in the WHS hard drive thread I thought it might be interesting to discuss external hard drives.

It doesn't make any sense to me why external drives are cheaper than internals. After all there is a whole lot more stuff with an external. Does anyone understand this pricing structure?

Right after the flood I thought there may be a lot of extra externals in inventory and that's why they are cheaper. But the trend seems to be continuing.

I'm also wondering if many of you who need an internal drive will buy an external, tear it open and use the drive as an internal? Of course the warranty is voided.

Rod

[RC23]

For my new HTPC I have ordered a WD30EZRX with 3TB which means 5 ct./GB.

Western Digital Caviar Green 3000GB, SATA 6Gb/s (WD30EZRX)  €146,05  http://geizhals.de/621714

The most low prized external drive with 3GB comes by Buffalo.

Buffalo DriveStation Axis 3000GB, USB 2.0 (HD-LB3.0TU2-EU) €184,15  http://geizhals.de/691371
http://www.buffalo-technology.de/hd-lbu3-drive-station-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive.html

The internal drive is more low-prized than the external solution. Which HDD model will be built by Bufffalo I donīt know.

The Western Digital model WD30EZRX works quick and silent for HTPC.

I donīt see that external drives are more cheap and better than internal drives.

[glynor]

Rod, I'm not sure where you're shopping, but internal drives are usually (still) cheaper than comparable external drives.  Every once in a while, they are equal in price, or slightly lower with short-term sales, but that isn't the rule, and we're usually talking by a couple bucks.

While the channel was limited, though (post-flood) the reverse was true for a little while.  That's because channel pricing reflects demand and availability.  The OEMs (Dell, ASUS, Apple, HP, etc) were sucking up almost all of the internal drive capacity available to stick in their machines, so retail prices for bare drives were higher.  OEMs don't sell huge numbers of external drives directly, so those prices were more "fairly distributed".

Now, if you are comparing a 2TB WD Black 7200RPM high-end drive to a 2TB external, then sure.  But that external drive isn't using a 7200RPM high-end SATA drive inside.  It has the cheapest "green" drive they can buy inside.

Prices:

Seagate 1TB USB3 Drive: $99 ($79 on sale right now) - cheapest 1TB external drive on Newegg today
Hitachi 1TB 7200RPM SATA drive: $79.00 (regular price) - cheapest 1TB internal on Newegg today

Samsung 2TB USB2 Drive: $129 ($99 on sale right now) - cheapest 2TB external
WD 2TB Caviar Green: $119 - cheapest 2TB internal

Seagate 3TB USB3 Drive: $159 ($129 on sale right now) - cheapest 3TB external
Seagate 3TB 7200RPM SATA: $159 - cheapest 3TB internal

So, they're basically even, except for occasional short-term sales (which can go either way, there were sales last week on the 2TB Greens that brought them down to $89).  Also, for "low capacity drives" the pricing is all crazy, so you can't really go by anything.  Anything below about 750GB isn't really being manufactured in any quantity anymore, except for special OEM usage.  Stuff still available is almost entirely overstock from the OEM market, or left-overs from when they were still being manufactured.  Pricing on that is all nuts, though, and can vary wildly from vendor to vendor.

Power supplies in the external drives all universally SUCK.  They're not worth buying, in almost any case.  You'd always be better off getting a good internal drive, and one of these.

[rjm]

Rod,
We live in the same area. If you have not tried NCIX.com I highly recommend them and buy all of my computer gear there. They have several lower mainland stores plus offer reasonably priced shipping. Sign up for their weekly newsletter and then be patient because every week there are excellent deals.
Rob

[glynor]

Seconded on NCIX for our friends in the great white north (they have good pricing on some stuff stateside too).

Newegg or Amazon is hard to beat though, stateside.

[WinoOutWest]

$89 for a 2TB.  Lowest I've seen in a long time:
http://goo.gl/0OTNe

[glynor]

$89 for a 2TB.  Lowest I've seen in a long time:
http://goo.gl/0OTNe

That's the one I was talking about for $99.  I wasn't logged in at the time so I didn't see the extra rebate code for subscribers.

Though, the 2TB Caviar Green was on sale for $89 last week at Newegg.  They'll be lower over the next couple weeks too.  Storage deals (that aren't just $5 off promo codes but real discounts) have been coming fast and furious lately, and reports are that the channel is now back to or approaching pre-flood inventory levels.

That means prices have to fall.  Pretty soon.

The sales are trying to get people to buy now at still-better-than-average margins before the bottom falls out again.  If you can wait two months, wait two months (that's what I'm doing, I need another two 3TB drives right now).  But if you can't, it isn't the worst time to buy in history.

[nwboater]

Thanks everyone for all the good info!

I'm in a small semi isolated town in BC, Canada and our only store for such stuff is Staples. In the past I've bought most of our computer stuff online from NewEgg.CA and occasionally from our local Staples.

I just did some online price checking. Keep in mind we usually pay a premium in Canada and also have less selection. Searched for the cheapest 3 Tb. drive. If external USB 3.0.

Staples.CA:  Internnal - No 3 TB available. External Seagate GoFlex $150.

NewEgg.Ca:  Internal - Seagate Barracuda ST300DM001 300 RPM  $170.  Western Digital WD30EZRX $180.
                  External - Seagate $140, WD  $180.

NCIX:           Internal - Seagate Barracuda ST300DM001 $190,  WD Caviar Green  $190.
                   External - Seagate STAY3000102 $140, WD My Book Essentials, Black  $260.

So just for lowest price in Seagate it would be the external for $140 at Newegg or NCIX. WD lowest price would be the internal or external at Newegg @ $180.

This of course is not waiting for good sales, just spot checking at three stores. But if price is the ONLY concern the Seagate External has it at $140.

Awhile back there was even a fairly long thread on the AVS forum about externals being cheaper and several people there were removing the drives from the external enclosures.

I didn't check for prices on better quality drives and that might change the equation.

Thanks again for everyone's input on this.

Rod