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WD Easystore 5TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - Black $94.99 + FS

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$94.99
$179.99

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Model: WD - Easystore 5TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - Black

Deal History 

Sort: Most Recent
Post Date Sold By Sale Price Activity
11/17/23Best Buy$99.99
14
09/19/23Best Buy$103
2
05/25/23Best Buy$98.99
4
01/15/23Best Buy$90 frontpage
48
10/01/22Best Buy$98.99
1
08/14/22Best Buy$95 popular
9
07/16/22Best Buy$95
4
06/11/22Best Buy$99
0
03/01/22eBay$95 frontpage
38
01/20/22Best Buy$94.99
0
01/18/22Best Buy$99
3
11/18/21eBay$90 frontpage
113
10/18/21Best Buy$90 frontpage
163
08/26/21eBay$90 frontpage
67
08/09/21Best Buy$107.99
10
07/25/21Best Buy$90 frontpage
63
06/28/21Best Buy$100
8
06/20/21Best Buy$90 frontpage
53
05/31/21Best Buy$100 popular
22
05/07/21Best Buy$100
3
Show More

Current Prices

Sort: Lowest to Highest | Last Updated 4/19/2024, 12:03 AM
Sold By Sale Price
Best Buy$134.99

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Joined Sep 2007
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> bubble2 53,505 Posts
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sr71
04-13-2021 at 10:04 PM.
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bennor
04-14-2021 at 03:28 AM.
04-14-2021 at 03:28 AM.
This may be a deal of the day thing from Best Buy. Normal price for this drive over the last few weeks has been $99.99. Price per TB is $19 at this $94.99 "sale" price. As a comparison Costco has a sale on the 5TB portable Seagate drive for $89.99 ($18 per TB) that runs through 5/7. Downside to that deal, is the drive is Seagate which many have issues with.

Answers to the usual common questions.

No these cannot be shucked. The USB port is integrated into the hard drive.

Yes these can be used as storage on PS5. Provided one has the latest PS5 update, see this announcement [playstation.com]. Note that apparently one cannot run games off the drive only use the drive to store games. To play games one would have to copy the game from the external drive to the internal PS5 storage. More here: Tips on using USB extended storage on PS5 [playstation.com]
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Last edited by bennor April 14, 2021 at 03:35 AM.
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playcatcher
04-14-2021 at 05:15 AM.
04-14-2021 at 05:15 AM.
Quote from bennor :
Downside to that deal, is the drive is Seagate which many have issues with.
What is manufacturer has the least problem and what kind of problem does seagate drive have? The price seems reasonable as I have been waiting for storage solution for sometime, but I would want to make sure I won't be inviting problems by purchasing a little cheaper option. Thank you for the great info!
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Joined Apr 2012
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> bubble2 686 Posts
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bennor
04-14-2021 at 05:41 AM.
04-14-2021 at 05:41 AM.
Quote from playcatcher :
What is manufacturer has the least problem and what kind of problem does seagate drive have? The price seems reasonable as I have been waiting for storage solution for sometime, but I would want to make sure I won't be inviting problems by purchasing a little cheaper option. Thank you for the great info!
Read through the comments on Costco for that Seagate drive. Read through any Seagate drive thread here. Some just don't like Seagate drives. Some point to the Backblaze.com drive stats [backblaze.com] as definitive proof, in their eyes, that all Seagate drives are bad. The problem with trying to use the Backblaze stats is they are typically not using portable hard drives, instead using drives in a data center which go through different life cycles than a typical consumer end user drive would.

There are few if any actual longevity/failure rate stats done by professionals on portable drives. Most information is anecdotal by people posting their own experiences with them. Any hard drive can fail. In the past there have been specific model runs that were defective (Seagate experienced this a few years ago). Some have no issues with this WD drive or that Seagate drive, some have had one or both fail on them.

Bottom line is this. Read reviews from numerous sites and blog posts and make up your own mind. Understand that any drive can fail. That if you value your data you should have multiple backups of that data to several drives and even to offsite location(s).
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TiltJunkie
04-14-2021 at 06:24 AM.
04-14-2021 at 06:24 AM.
Frankly if you do your backups as you should with any drive because they all fail Seagate is a better deal when you consider Costco "warranty".

Also, all portable WD drives I've seen recently don't have SATA interface so drive is unusable outside of the case. Not sure how this particular Seagate is but I haven't seen a Seagate drive using that design yet.
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> bubble2 400 Posts
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uh2-2u
04-14-2021 at 06:31 AM.
04-14-2021 at 06:31 AM.
Quote from TiltJunkie :

Also, all portable WD drives I've seen recently don't have SATA interface so drive is unusable outside of the case.
I bought 4 18TB WD external drives a few months ago. Shucked them and are now using them in a NAS.
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TiltJunkie
04-14-2021 at 06:37 AM.
04-14-2021 at 06:37 AM.
Quote from uh2-2u :
I bought 4 18TB WD external drives a few months ago. Shucked them and are now using them in a NAS.
"all portable WD drives" meaning 2.5" size.
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grilledsteak
04-14-2021 at 06:42 AM.
04-14-2021 at 06:42 AM.
Quote from TiltJunkie :
Also, all portable WD drives I've seen recently don't have SATA interface so drive is unusable outside of the case.
What interface exactly do you think the WD drives are using? PATA/IDE? Ultra ATA? Maybe there's a new ATAPI version out.
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Last edited by grilledsteak April 14, 2021 at 06:46 AM.
Joined Apr 2012
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> bubble2 686 Posts
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bennor
04-14-2021 at 06:49 AM.
04-14-2021 at 06:49 AM.
Quote from uh2-2u :
I bought 4 18TB WD external drives a few months ago. Shucked them and are now using them in a NAS.
Apples to oranges. This deal is on a portable drive not the large capacity external desktop drives. The USB adapter is integrated into the 2.5 inch hard drive on these portable WD drives so they cannot be shucked and used in the same fashion as the external desktop 3.5 inch drive can.
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Joined Oct 2011
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> bubble2 4,141 Posts
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polymorphicdeal
04-14-2021 at 06:51 AM.
04-14-2021 at 06:51 AM.
Quote from grilledsteak :
What interface exactly do you think the WD drives are using? PATA/IDE? Ultra ATA? Maybe there's a new ATAPI version out.
The interface is modified so it is not standard.
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grilledsteak
04-14-2021 at 06:53 AM.
04-14-2021 at 06:53 AM.
Quote from polymorphicdeal :
The interface is modified so it is not standard.
Thanks TiltJunkie, but you didn't answer my question.
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bennor
04-14-2021 at 06:55 AM.
04-14-2021 at 06:55 AM.
Quote from grilledsteak :
What interface exactly do you think the WD drives are using? PATA/IDE? Ultra ATA? Maybe there's a new ATAPI version out.
They likely mean there isn't an SATA port on these portable WD drives. That the USB port is integrated into the hard drive and cannot be removed, like on other external USB hard drives, to gain access to a SATA port.

Hard to find images for it, but see this video (at the 3:09 mark) for an example of a WD portable drive with the USB port integrated into the hard drive (WD Elements).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41nWU5gyyak
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Last edited by bennor April 14, 2021 at 07:48 AM.
Joined Sep 2012
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Baguda
04-14-2021 at 07:01 AM.
04-14-2021 at 07:01 AM.
Prices in the $90-$100 range for 5 TB seem to be pretty common. Last year several times BB had this drive for $90 ($5 less). I still have a few unused 8 TB externals, so I'm not chomping at the bit to buy another external HD even if it's portable. I'll at least wait for a slightly better price.

As others have said, if you're going to shuck, then you need to get a Seagate (until they change it) instead of a WD.

I will throw out one thing I've wondered about lately in case someone knows. Realizing just how much data the govt and companies collect (pretty much everything) into multiple databases every day, I wonder this: how can HD manufacturers make enough HDs to keep up with the demand from the govt and surv eillance companies like Google?

I'd love to know the numbers, but I'd guess to store everything new on the Internet every day it would take tens of thousands of new large capacity HDs per day. You'd think consumer HD usage would be a tiny percentage of WD's and Seagate's sales. Anyone know?
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joanlandor
04-14-2021 at 07:16 AM.
04-14-2021 at 07:16 AM.
Would any of you buy a returned WD Red/Gold/Purple/Black/etc drive from those warehouse deals at Amazon or those at Newegg/etc?
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Last edited by joanlandor April 14, 2021 at 07:32 AM.
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