Where to Buy: HDDs for baby's first Media Library

Hardware Hub Storage
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I’m starting to get serious about building up a local media database and am looking to acquire some large volume storage. I am in the UK, budget about £350 in total and do not use Amazon.

I may look at putting together a proper NAS at some point in the near future but right now I’m just looking to acquire some large capacity drives for ripping bluray to/storing backups etc, at least, 20-30TB in 2-3 drives.

My only criteria:

  • Has to be reliable long term
  • Has to be decent value for money (ideally £11/TB or less)
  • Cannot be SMR (thinking of use in RAID in the future)

Having a look around at various videos and other resources like Disk Prices I think my best bet is probably still internal 3.5" HDD’s, specifically slightly older enterprise/SME targeted drives. A lot of sources I’ve read/watched mention buying manufacturer renewed enterprise drives.

The issue is that I have no idea where the hell I should buy them from. Storage hasn’t been something I’ve looked at in years, and trying to find a source for any of the well rated drives that is:

  • Trustworthy, not some tiny ebay seller or popup webstore with no reviews
  • Clear about the condition of the drives and the region they’re coming from (matters for warranty)
  • Actually stocks the good value drive models at a reasonable price

Is proving very difficult.
I generally don’t buy anything new, underwear excluded, and get everything off of ebay/other used sites, but I’m wary of doing that here, I don’t want to be cursing myself out in 5 year’s time if my disks die because I tried to save a few quid now.

I can get new consumer drives from reputable sellers easily, but its twice the cost per TB or more and the warranty isn’t as good.

Do I just bite the bullet and buy refurbed drives to get the capacity I want, and hope they’ve been refurbed properly?
Is there something I am missing entirely here?

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Referb drives personally give me the heebiejeebies. Direct from a manufacturer wouldn’t be completely out of the question for me, especially if they disclose what exactly they have done to “refurbish”, but off of any other marketplace is a no. Seen too many stories of unscrupulous sellers doing nothing more than a wipe and relabel.

I bought seagate exos 18tb drives like a year and a half ago at $15/TB, that seemed like a good deal to me. Oddly the enterprise drives were cheaper than the consumer NAS ones. Prices have actually gone UP a little since then and I have no idea what that translates to in… that symbol is british pounds right?

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Yeah, that’s what’s giving me pause too, if I could buy direct from the manufacturer I’d go straight ahead and do it, but all of the sellers I can find are varying degrees of sketch and I just don’t want to deal with the hassle.

Prices in the UK are absurd for everything, new drives seem to be going for about £16.10 - 21.25 per TB, which is pretty brutal imo. That’d be about $20.36 - 26.87, twice what I’d set my budget at.

Maybe I just buy less now and hope I’m less poor in the future.

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Personally I buy used enterprise drives off Enterprise Server HDDs & SSDs | Cheap, Refurbished, Drives or new kit from either ebuyer.com or scan.co.uk Not saying they are the best, just that I’ve had good luck.

But I rather buy used drives and add redundancy, expecting some to fail. So far, very few have, but I have only small numbers of drives, and dont hammer them 24/7

Also also, I have SAS backplanes, so can go for used SAS drives.

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This could be the one, prices look reasonable and they’ve been around for a while. I could probably pick up 4 or 5 of these.

How would you define very few failures and a small number of drives?
I have a total of maybe 6TB on hand, I’d say small for you could be quite large for me.

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I rather not go into actual numbers yet, but I plan for 1 in 4 to fail over 2 years.
as in, I buy enough spares and excess, so I can replace in place, without having to worry about ordering new ones, and awaiting shipping.
if it costs £50 or £40 for a 4TB drive now (was closer to $80 back in the day)
and I want 12 TB useable, then its about £200 ish for 4 drives. (or whatever the SAS/SATA HGST/Seagate / WD drives go for now) If they sell SATA drives for a good price, then they are much more versatile on what system you can plug them into.

Often it will be in zfs versions of raid6 with 6 drives, or for 2tb and under, raid5.

This is just me being me though.

I have a bunch of 2TB drives built in 2012, EOL’d in 2017 after 5 years in enterprise use, brought be me between 2018-2019 still running in 2023-2024 (some rotated thru cold storage, so not heavily used)
so almost 10 years, out of some older drives.

buuut, “they don’t make 'em like they used to” could mean, that small, 2- and 4- TB drives, had more “slack” space in them, not too densely packed with platters and such that perhaps they stand up to heat better than newer, MUCH larger drives.

So just because my old rust is spinning, dopes not mean that brand new rust dies in a year.

I don’t use all drives at the same time, so they are not on 24/7 (I especially cut down the number when energy got expensive…)

So I have only 4X 4TB drives in my nas, in zfs stripped mirrors (raid10.) When one drive dies, I will have a chance to carry on and replace it, and keep the system running in the mean time.
My desktop also has a 4x 2TB drives in zfs striped mirror (raid10).
I have a set of 8X 2TB drives, in raidz2 for my warm backup in my desktop, and 8x 4TB in raidz2 for the cold backup of my NAS

So far, I personally have only 1 died itself, and I physically damaged 3 drives in the last 5 years, but that is just atypical, and subjective. so like, 30 odd drives, over 3 computers, and my luck is they are not yet needing to replace. And I have a small stack of the dead or suspect drives.
I have a couple spare 2- and 4tb drives, so I can exchange when the next one dies.

Also, I have a 4x 4TB bunch I use to replicate data, and use as a mobile pool, or when I wanna re-organise an array, I can copy across, the data to keep, or make a live version, or even just put the mobile pool in place, set it up, and copy from the old pool across, then decommission the drives that were in use.

So i just wasted a bunch of money, on drives sitting by, that gives me the peace of mind that any can fail at any time, and there is a comfortable chance of plugging a replacement in relatively soon.

I also over-spent on the rack cases to house them, with backplanes so I can mix-and-match between systems

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I think I’m going to pick up 2-4 HUS726060ALE610 6TB drives and call it a day, if I can snipe one I might see about a USB multi dock for them.

I have “space” for 2 HDD’s internally in my computer case but its very cramped as is, not sure its really worth trying to shove them in there, right now all I’m doing is storing stuff after I’m done with it and that can be done over USB well enough.

I forgot how damn loud HDD’s actually are, the noise is kind of nostalgic.

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