CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

wallace123456 · Joined: 14 Aug 2006 Posts: 2236 Location: Northwest VA area

I understand that hard drives were higher priced due to flooding and stuff over seas. The price for hard drives are coming back down. But I swear, it seems like the external units are cheaper then the internal units. Shocked

Any ideas why?

wallace

Elaine Benes · Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Posts: 1416

Cause they bought the actual drives in bulk long before they put them into the housings would be one reason, perhaps another would be an unbreakable "contract" price, whereas internal drives being sold to the public are "commodity" priced based on supply and demand.

I bought three 2.5" external hdd's that were on clearance at CT, the actual drives themselves were from 2009(I opened the cases....of course...).

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

I bought four 3TB external USB3 drives the week prices started to climb. I did this before a) Costco could raise the price (they never did!), and b) before their inventory dropped.

wallace123456 · Joined: 14 Aug 2006 Posts: 2236 Location: Northwest VA area

Interesting; get more for less; External = more equipment; Internal = Less equipment.

Internal more money................ What the heck????

wallace

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:42 am Post subject:

I'm waiting for the HDD prices to come back down, I need some 2GB 3.5" HDD's

Jeremy112 · Joined: 28 Sep 2006 Posts: 2649 Location: Fond du Lac, WI

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:00 pm Post subject:

CasetheCorvetteman · Joined: 09 Nov 2008 Posts: 6326 Location: Australia

Well for one, id be checking the performance of the drive included within the external caddy, cause that is one very good reason itll be less, there is alot of variants of each size when it comes to performance!!

When its in an external caddy, its not like as if it needs to be a fast drive, any drive will do the job and its still going to be slow as hell unless you use e-SATA.

RayN999 · Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 3:36 am Post subject:

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

It is strange that the USB3 is theoretically 5 Gbps, but even when connected to a SATA1 I'm only seeing 72-75 MB/s transfers between eSATA and USB3 devices. The eSATA connected drive was 7200 RPM, but I'm guessing the external USB3 WDC solution drives is probably 5400 RPM.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 7:09 pm Post subject:

wallace123456 · Joined: 14 Aug 2006 Posts: 2236 Location: Northwest VA area

Still not sure this pricing stuff makes. I can just as easily pull the drive from the case and install into my PC.

Maybe I am still missing something. Confused

wallace

grogthegreat · Joined: 16 May 2007 Posts: 166 Location: San Diego, CA

The external drives typically have a reduced warranty but you can always buy an external drive, tear it apart, and use the drive internally.

nettwerkjohn · Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2012 12:13 pm Post subject:

like womens underwear - the less you get, the more it costs...

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 5:23 am Post subject:

CIR Engineering · Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 7:20 pm Post subject:

For those who haven't seen my server thread:
https://www.curtpalme.com/forum_archived/viewtopic.php@t=32320.html

I think some of the thing with external being cheaper than internal is a different type of competition. You have a shelf full of say 2TB external drives. All from different manufacturers, and most times no one knows what kind of drive is inside. So a Seagate that should sell for less as an internal can masquerade as being equivalent to a WD or Toshiba.

You also have different kinds of drives for different OS's. OSX external drives are priced much higher than Windows drives even though they have identical hardware inside. In this case, the internal price is much lower.

I think the whole drive pricing thing is just stupid for the buyer. One week Newegg will have WD 3TB drives for $155 and the next week they are $135, then the following week they are $155 again. Also, often external drives do cost more than internals, but lately they have been reversed.

Don, what they hell do you need more drives for right now anyway? We just got your 8TB NAS setup two weeks ago Smile

craigr

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 7:27 pm Post subject:

the big E · Joined: 20 Apr 2013 Posts: 1928 Location: speedwell Tn.