WD Black 3TB 7200rpm = $149.99

[RaistlinZ]

Lowest price I currently see for the 3TB WD Black.

$162.99 - $13.00 instant (EMCAKKX29) = $149.99 @ Newegg

 

[VirtualLarry]

Still practically highway robbery. Toshiba retail-boxed 3TB 7200RPM HDDs with 3-year warranty drop down to $100 every few weeks / months. Probably still cheaper to purchase one of those, and a 2-year extended warranty at Newegg, than pay for a Black.

WD is holding desktop drive purchasers hostage, by only offering their cheaper 7200RPM "Blue" drives in up to 1TB capacities.

If you need 2/3/4TB, it's either a horribly-overpriced Black, or a 5400RPM Green or Red. Sure, they came out with Red Pro, some of them are high-capacity and 7200RPM, but they are priced like Black drives.

Edit: I guess what I'm trying say, and trying hard not to directly thread-crap, because if that's the lowest price available for that drive, then it is indeed a deal, but I'm more of the school of thought of buying more cheaper drives, for redundancy, rather than rely on a single high-priced drive that happens to have a longer warranty. That's still no guarantee that it won't go south on you. Backups!

 

[mikeford]

WD hasn't failed for me recently, cost of the drive isn't the prime issue, reliable data storage is. MC had 3TB reds for $109 last time I bought one. What possible content would not be worth several times that price to have more reliability?

 

[stargazr]

WD hasn't failed for me recently, cost of the drive isn't the prime issue, reliable data storage is. MC had 3TB reds for $109 last time I bought one. What possible content would not be worth several times that price to have more reliability?

Any drive can fail. You still need to back up your data. I had a WD Black 1.5 TB fail after 1 1/2 years. They replaced it, and that one failed after a year. That one they gave me was a 2TB though, apparently the other model is discontinued.

OTOH, four years ago I reluctantly purchased a Seagate 2TB external. It seemed like their reputation was not so great at the time, but it was a black Friday deal I couldn't resist. I expected the WD drive to last much longer, and was worried the Seagate would fail. It still works fine.

 

[mikeford]

2TB Seagate was my education, had three, two in a raid mirror, then one day over about 30 minutes my data became inaccessible. Took me the Seagate pro recovery program and months to get it back. No smart events, no warning, both drives when checked failed the extended Seagate RMA test, so it wasn't the controller.