Can anybody direct me to a good spot to buy some affordable SATA hard drives? I am setting up a network dedicated to crunching for SETI@Home and i have a handful of dual core machines that have no hard drives in them. Being as this is a volunteer activity, I do not want to spend an arm and a leg, and I don't need brand new hard drives.
If any of you have a source, website, ebay or amazon seller etc.. that you have had good experiences with and trust buying a REFURBISHED hard drive from, please let me know. Again, the machines i need these hard drives for will be soley used for BOINC so I don't need anything fancy. I would only buy new if its a really good deal (clearance sale or something). Thanks.

pricewatch has always been good to me

I normally do everything with Newegg. They do have refurbs listed all the time. Problem is that the prices are still kind of high across the board due to that flood back in October. I desperately need some new drives myself, but I am not paying as much as they are charging. I shall continue waiting.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Newegg for quality and service- highest prices

Tigerdirect- mid prices, mid service

pricewatch, amazon- for the cheapest prices

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#resist

thanks guys! will check all those out.

I use pricegrabber, nextag, and google shopping to find the cheapest places for what I want.. However these days most of the time the cheapest place they list for what I want ends up being amazon.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

I've had good luck with http://www.amuras.com

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

I really have been looking for a good replacement for Newegg. I need a trustworthy up-and-comer that can beat Newegg's prices, and match their service. Tiger is ok, but you never know if your stuff will be shipped to you or to Alaska, or if the whole order will all be there the first time.....

And thanks Slavac. I bookmarked them and will check 'em out, maybe even give em a go.

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#resist

I really have been looking for a good replacement for Newegg. I need a trustworthy up-and-comer that can beat Newegg's prices, and match their service. Tiger is ok, but you never know if your stuff will be shipped to you or to Alaska, or if the whole order will all be there the first time.....

When you find that company, please send me a message. I love Newegg for the fact that if they have it in stock, we can order the item for SETI ASAP. With that said they like to fluctuate prices at random, almost always for the higher.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

I had an order I had to postpone once (around 2500$), it was almost 150$ more after a week when I finally made payment.

I thought computer parts lose value and drop in price quickly. LOL!

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#resist

I had an order I had to postpone once (around 2500$), it was almost 150$ more after a week when I finally made payment.

I thought computer parts lose value and drop in price quickly. LOL!

Well you thought wrong! :P

Hard drive prices are still going down, but haven't returned to the prices they were at before the flooding. Also memory prices are on their way up at the moment.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

what flooding are you guys referring to? how did this affect hardware prices?

what flooding are you guys referring to? how did this affect hardware prices?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Thailand_floods

The World Bank has estimated 1,425 billion baht (US$ 45.7 Bn) in economic damages and losses due to flooding, as of 1 December 2011.[2][3] Most of this was to the manufacturing industry, as seven major industrial estates were inundated by as much 3 meters (10 feet) during the floods.[4] Disruptions to manufacturing supply chains affected regional automobile production and caused a global shortage of hard disk drives, which is expected to last throughout 2012.

Claggy

wow. i didnt know thailand was where the HDD farms are ;-)

wow. i didnt know thailand was where the HDD farms are ;-)

Most major HD manufacturers have some components made in Thailand. Our donors paid through the teeth during the flooding to pay for the HD's we needed for various projects.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

wow. i didnt know thailand was where the HDD farms are ;-)

Yes it seems as though the flooding destroyed most of this years crop of HDD's. I'm hoping for a nice fresh batch in the fall. So I can replace/upgrade my aging RAID array of 1TB drives.

To give you an idea of how prices changed. I ordered a 750GB 2.5" drive for my HTPC October 15th for about $90. The following Monday they were listed for around $300. Six months later the drive is down to $120. The old 1TB 2.5" drives I bought in 2009 for $92.50 are currently selling for $102.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

wow. i didnt know thailand was where the HDD farms are ;-)

Yes it seems as though the flooding destroyed most of this years crop of HDD's. I'm hoping for a nice fresh batch in the fall. So I can replace/upgrade my aging RAID array of 1TB drives.

To give you an idea of how prices changed. I ordered a 750GB 2.5" drive for my HTPC October 15th for about $90. The following Monday they were listed for around $300. Six months later the drive is down to $120. The old 1TB 2.5" drives I bought in 2009 for $92.50 are currently selling for $102.

The 1TB drive that I ordered in September for $50 is currently at $110.

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^ Yep. I have three WD Black 1TB drives in an eSATA enclosure. Bought them all at different times throughout 2010. Most expensive one was 129, second one was 99, and the third one was 79. After the flood, they were 350, I believe. They are down to 139 now, I think. I kind of need to migrate to 2TB though, and those are still astronomical.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Yes it seems as though the flooding destroyed most of this years crop of HDD's. I'm hoping for a nice fresh batch in the fall. So I can replace/upgrade my aging RAID array of 1TB drives.

My server's Raid10 had to be built with 1TB drives instead of 2TB drives due to the prices. Now I'll just wait until 4TBs are commonplace, and affordable to upgrade my RAID sadly.

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#resist

Yes it seems as though the flooding destroyed most of this years crop of HDD's. I'm hoping for a nice fresh batch in the fall. So I can replace/upgrade my aging RAID array of 1TB drives.

My server's Raid10 had to be built with 1TB drives instead of 2TB drives due to the prices. Now I'll just wait until 4TBs are commonplace, and affordable to upgrade my RAID sadly.

I'm still using 4x500gb WD RE2's in a RAID5 that I built six years ago. I desperately need at least 1.5TB of free space somewhere to re-locate the contents and rebuild the array with a different configuration. I need to make the stripe size larger, and I had a meltdown two years ago where the array became destroyed (one disk punted itself, and when I unplugged the SATA cable for it and plugged it back in, power draw on the 5v rail made the other three cycle and then each disk thought it was the only surviving member. Had to do a rescue rebuild on it).

The member disks can do around 105MB/sec read and 75MB/sec write, but with the 16KB stripe size, read tops out at 173MB/sec and write is somewhere around 130MB/sec. I need to up the stripe to probably 64KB to get the most out of it. I'm thinking if I configure it right, read should be around 275-300MB/sec and write should easily be over 125, hopefully closer to 150.

Also at the same time, I really need to upgrade the firmware on the Areca card. I haven't found any concrete evidence that says I can do it without losing the array. Friend of mine got the identical card and upgrading the firmware nuked his array, but I've read several forums that say it should work just fine. Better to be safe than sorry.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)