Who is your go to supplier for drives aside from Amazon and Newegg? Just going to spot check prices. 18 cam system going in with BI optimized and I’m thinking 2 4TB Purple Drives splitting cam recording evenly between them.
For me, it's been newegg and amazon since 2007; shipping is fast from both and has to be figured in with the overall cost (usually newegg's is free as is amazon Prime).
Personally, I won't go $2-3 cheaper if it takes more than 4 days to receive it.
I won an auction for a factory new 10tb from eBay the other day for $175. Received it promptly from seller. It was in the sealed package. Went on the western digital website and registered it. It’s in warranty until sept 2022. I was happy with that deal.
The seller doesn’t have anything else listed right now except for some $200 Nike’s.
I will usually watch things I want on eBay for several days or weeks. I’ve always done really good on purchasing on eBay. But you have to pay attention also. For instance I was going to bid on a 12tb from another seller. I go look at his recent feedback and see it’s all 100%. So I pull up the ended auctions of the most recent reviews. Found to be exact same hard drive and sn of the current auction. So obviously someone was pushing the price up and then giving a review for him. Other ones I will look at the label very closely in pics to make sure it’s not a printed label. Pull up sn if I can read it and see if anything comes up. You can usually sniff out the bad sellers and the legit ones by just doing a little bit of digging. There are some really good but it now prices out there if you look and wait for them. You can get some really good deals on auctions with patience.
Also note that there are some people selling “refurbished” drives. And some those are actually people who are “turning in” a drive under warranty to Western Digital and putting the buyers name and address on the return once the buyer purchases it from the eBay seller. The buyer then will sometimes get a brand new drive of equal or greater value of the one they bought from western digital. I don’t know if the sellers doing this are actually sending in a drive or if they are just submitting stolen SNs or what. But if you have a NAS to fill up and like to gamble it can really pay off.
For just a little more than the cost of (2) 4tb purple drives you can buy an enterprise class, 8TB Gold drive with a 5-year warranty. One of the first things I do when I buy a new hard drive (mainly WD) is to go to their website and make sure it is registered properly and shows the correct expiration date
I wouldn't trust any drive sold from an individual on an auction site. It would be difficult to say how many times that drive was dropped or mistreated in some way, etc.
I understand and I know it can be a gamble. I have been lucky so far with all of my dealings on auction sites over the years. Most individuals want to insure the item you bought makes it to you in good condition from my experience. I can’t say as much for someone who really doesn’t care and is just working for a wage day in and day out.