Price trends in NOS 3.5" SATA drives

[cbn]

Here are some price trends I noticed while shopping on Amazon for a New Old Stock 3.5" SATA HDD :

New Western Digital Caviar SE 80GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at around $13 to $14 shipped.

New Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at around $17 to $18 shipped.

New Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at $22 shipped.

According to my notes from late summer last year, NOS 80GB 3.5" HDD at that time were going for $20 shipped and 160GB NOS drives were around $25 shipped.

That is pretty decent reduction in price over ~9 months time.

 

[cbn]

New Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at $38 shipped.

New Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 500GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at $30 shipped.

So interestingly enough, the WD 500GB drives have a larger than expected price gap compared to the WD 320GB drives.

 

[piasabird]

New Old Stock? Sounds pretty silly. Maybe there is a glut of hard drives.

They make so many different kinds of hard drives like
Standard Desktop Drives
Standard Mobile (Laptop) drives
Supposed higher quality drives i.e. BLU Label.
High quality Hard Drives designed for SERVERS and RAID.
NAS drives
Drives designed for Video Camera Recording
GREEN drives.
Tablets tend to have no drives?
4-128 gig Micro SD cards
SSD Drives
SSHD Hybrids.

 

[cbn]

Standard Mobile (Laptop) drives

New old stock prices for 2.5" SATA HDD on Amazon:

New Western Digital Scorpio Blue 80GB SATA 2.5" HDD starting at $20 shipped.
New Western Digital Scorpio Blue 120GB SATA 2.5" HDD starting at $27 shipped.
New Western Digital Scorpio Blue 160GB SATA 2.5" HDD starting at $32 shipped.
New Western Digital Blue 250GB SATA 2.5" HDD starting at $34 shipped.
New Western Digital Blue 320GB SATA 2.5" HDD starting at $36 shipped.

 

[cbn]

I ended up going with the WD 3.5" 320GB for $22 shipped.

It was double bubble wrapped around a sealed anti-static bag (Amazon vendor was GoHard Drives.com). It also came with a 1 year warranty.

I did notice it was a Western Digital Caviar SE drive rather than a Western Digital Blue drive. Both appear to have the same specs and carry WD3200AAJS as the model number so I not sure if they are really even different?

 

[cbn]

Just confirmed S.M.A.R.T. on my NOS Western Digital 3.5" 320GB drive.

Right now it has 1 hour on it. (So yes it was, in fact, new).

 

[richierich1212]

cbn, any updated price list?

 

[cbn]

cbn, any updated price list?

Looking at the 500 GB and under capacity Western Digital 3.5" drives I noticed the following:

1.) New Western Digital 160 GB Caviar Blue is $16.28 shipped

So a $1 to $2 off compared to the New Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB I listed last time.

2.) I don't see the new 80 GB Western Digital drives at $13 to $14 shipped anymore. (They are more expensive now).

3.) New Western Digital 320 GB drives @ ~$22 shipped still appear to be $1 or $2 cheaper than the New 250GB ones (which I didn't list last time)

4.) New Western Digital 500 GB Blue drives have increased in price to $45 shipped.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I would just imagine that anyone looking for an internal SATA disk of such paltry capacity will just go SSD. I have some 160GB WDC drives sitting around that I test an OS on once in a blue moon.

Not often, because I am reminded just how slow they are at booting an OS.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Not often, because I am reminded just how slow they are at booting an OS.

My friend was asking me if the reason that his computer was slower, was because we added an SSD to it a few years ago. (He currently has a 120GB, with 70GB free.)

He says he remembers going to his favorite forum site, and watching it come up "instantly", and then watching the threads load in. (When he was running off of a HDD.)

I told him I would be happy to re-install Win7 64-bit on his HDD instead, if he wanted. :whiste:

 

[cbn]

I would just imagine that anyone looking for an internal SATA disk of such paltry capacity will just go SSD. I have some 160GB WDC drives sitting around that I test an OS on once in a blue moon.

Not often, because I am reminded just how slow they are at booting an OS.

Yes, booting will be faster with SSD.

But coming out of sleep is still very fast even with 80GB HDD.

With that mentioned, the situation that makes me want a faster HDD (or SSD) the most is when RAM is 2GB. (re: With 2GB RAM system slow downs caused by disk swapping are more prevalent than when there is 4GB or more of RAM).

P.S. I haven't tested 2GB RAM with 160GB 3.5" HDD yet, but 2GB RAM + 80GB HDD is really slow. 2GB RAM + 64GB SSD or 4GB RAM + 80GB HDD (fresh install) is much faster.

 

[cbn]

NOS Western Digital 160GB Raptor for $25.99 free shipping:

(It has a 1 year warranty from the seller)

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Raptor-160GB-000RPM/dp/B003FOJ7SO

Random access time is lower with these than what a larger capacity 7200 rpm drive would have. Sequential read and write speed is not very fast though.

 

[cbn]

NOS Western Digital 300GB Raptor for $44.00 shipped:

(It has a 1 year warranty from the seller. Notice 3.5" Icepack heatsink is missing)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-list...keywords=Western+Digital+Raptor&condition=new

 

[cbn]

Regarding NOS drives, both the regular type and the Raptors...I think the Western Digital Recertified drives are a good comparison point.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37649305&postcount=6

Here is a Western Digital recertified 3200AZKX (320GB) on sale for $21 free shipping after promo code (unfortunately it expires today):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236963

According to the following database this is a 1TB platter drive short stroked to 320GB:

http://rml527.blogspot.com/2010/10/hdd-platter-database-western-digital-35_26.html

So its a relatively new manufacture drive.

In contrast, my NOS 320GB WD Caviar SE (for $22 shipped) is an older drive based on two 160GB platters according to the same data base.

Overall, the performance of this 320GB drive I am listing here would be much greater than that NOS 320GB drive I bought back in June. This due to the higher platter density and short stroking.

NOS (but slower) with one year warranty vs. Recertified (but faster, newer design) with 180 day warranty....an interesting choice to make.

P.S. More info on the effect of short stroking here and here.

 

[cbn]

Here are some price trends I noticed while shopping on Amazon for a New Old Stock 3.5" SATA HDD :

New Western Digital Caviar SE 80GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at around $13 to $14 shipped.

New Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at around $17 to $18 shipped.

New Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at $22 shipped.

According to my notes from late summer last year, NOS 80GB 3.5" HDD at that time were going for $20 shipped and 160GB NOS drives were around $25 shipped.

That is pretty decent reduction in price over ~9 months time.

New Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at $19.60 shipped:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000Q85WOK/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

So over one year later, not much price reduction.

EDIT: Here is a listing for the same drive @ $17.95 shipped with 1 year warranty for Goharddrive.com:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-lis...tern+Digital+Caviar+Blue+320+GB&condition=new

So with this new listing we have a $4 price decrease (from $22) in ~14 months time.

 

[cbn]

New Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at $38 shipped.

New Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 500GB SATA 3.5" HDD starting at $30 shipped.

So interestingly enough, the WD 500GB drives have a larger than expected price gap compared to the WD 320GB drives.

Price (@$41.44 shipped) actually increased $3 on the Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-lis...tern+Digital+500+GB+Caviar+blue&condition=new

Cheapest New 500GB 3.5" SATA drive I could find was the Western Digital Caviar Green (Retail package) for $29.98 shipped:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0013FVZWI/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

Here is a brief review of the drive and I did notice the newegg reviews (in the listings below) look good:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136149

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136334 (Retail box listing)

Interestingly, even when using the lower priced WD 500GB green for comparison the gap between NOS 320GB and NOS 500GB 3.5" SATA drives still remains higher than expected with price per GB actually ~7% higher on the 500GB Green compared to the 320GB Blue @ 17.95 shipped.