Costco: Seagate One Touch 5TB Portable Hard Drive - $94.99 (8/4/21 through 8/29/21)

Quote from Customcreazn : I've always geared towards WD but this seems like a pretty good deal. Any pros and cons with one over the other?? For An extra $10 I can just head to Best buy and purchase my preferred WD brand for the same amount of storage.

last I checked, the "portable" Seagate drives were using standard 2.5" HDD's with a SATA connector, whereas the equivalent Western Digital drives don't have a SATA connector and instead have USB directly attached to the drives. This has implications if you intend to shuck them.
Could also benefit from others corroborating this since I have not checked it myself but had to dig online for a while to find out

I am picking the 2nd backup drive, so this offer and Easystore 5tb at Bestbuy come head-to-head. Reliability is hard to judge as significant time required.
But what about the speed - are there noticeable differences between WD and SG?

This is a good price for this drive and Costco has had it for this price (or roughly thereabouts) before. I have three of them. Two are running 24/7 for almost 3 years and one of them is on the kids' PS4 for almost 2 years. None of them have given me any issues. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another if I had a need for it. Too bad prices have not dropped more, or at least capacities increased for the same price, thanks Covid.

Quote from TiltJunkie : Also, comes with 3 years of free data recovery service which is not cheap when you need it.

WOW, that's amazing! I wasn't tempted but now I'm going to BUY. Seriously.

Does anyone happen to know if the data recovery service is GOOD?

> Fred: See if you can get anything off this drive, Timmy.

> Timmy: OK, Dad, as soon as this Minecraft is done. ... Nope, it doesn't work, Dad.

> Fred: Thanks for trying, Timmy. Costco pays me $10 to try to recover data, so you just made me $10! Let's go get ice cream, I'll buy!

> Timmy: You're the best Dad in the world! Just remind me to go elsewhere if I ever need data recovery, Dad!

Quote from hoytster : WOW, that's amazing! I wasn't tempted but now I'm going to BUY. Seriously. Does anyone happen to know if the data recovery service is GOOD? > Fred: See if you can get anything off this drive, Timmy. > Timmy: OK, Dad, as soon as this Minecraft is done. ... Nope, it doesn't work, Dad. > Fred: Thanks for trying, Timmy. Costco pays me $10 to try to recover data, so you just made me $10! Let's go get ice cream, I'll buy! > Timmy: You're the best Dad in the world! Just remind me to go elsewhere if I ever need data recovery, Dad!

That's interesting, didn't realize Timmy works for Seagate. Good info there... keep it up!

in for 1

Quote from hoytster : WOW, that's amazing! I wasn't tempted but now I'm going to BUY. Seriously. Does anyone happen to know if the data recovery service is GOOD? > Fred: See if you can get anything off this drive, Timmy. > Timmy: OK, Dad, as soon as this Minecraft is done. ... Nope, it doesn't work, Dad. > Fred: Thanks for trying, Timmy. Costco pays me $10 to try to recover data, so you just made me $10! Let's go get ice cream, I'll buy! > Timmy: You're the best Dad in the world! Just remind me to go elsewhere if I ever need data recovery, Dad!

Unless you are Timmy or Timmy's dad, any reason why we should believe this is all Seagate does? Curious, because I have used similar services in my professional life and we had bit more success than what you posted.

This thing out of the box is SLOWER than molasses. Transfer speeds over usb3 suck.

Quote from blackadder : This thing out of the box is SLOWER than molasses. Transfer speeds over usb3 suck.

How about posting some actual numbers or results (like from Crystal Disk Mark [crystalmark.info] or similar) so others have some idea about the actual slow speeds you are seeing.

Quote from Customcreazn : I've always geared towards WD but this seems like a pretty good deal. Any pros and cons with one over the other?? For An extra $10 I can just head to Best buy and purchase my preferred WD brand for the same amount of storage.

This is shuckable WD is not…

Quote from bennor : How about posting some actual numbers or results (like from Crystal Disk Mark [crystalmark.info] or similar) so others have some idea about the actual slow speeds you are seeing.

Will do. I'll be able to compare to a couple disk i have floating around as well.

Quote from blackadder : Will do. I'll be able to compare to a couple disk i have floating around as well.

Sequential Read 1MIB 148.76 MB/s Wirte 24.53 MB/s
Random 4KiB (32) Read 1.33MB/s Write 3.25MB/s
Random 4KiB (1) Read 0.47 MB/s Write 0.20MB/s

The WD 5TB gamer edition I had showed this: It's got .5tb full but a decent comparison: --------------------

[Read]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 71.099 MB/s [ 67.8 IOPS] <116215.05 us>
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 74.665 MB/s [ 71.2 IOPS] < 14004.26 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 0.434 MB/s [ 106.0 IOPS] <291737.37 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 0.426 MB/s [ 104.0 IOPS] < 9557.08 us>

[Write]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 63.970 MB/s [ 61.0 IOPS] <129247.16 us>
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 62.710 MB/s [ 59.8 IOPS] < 16653.82 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 13.367 MB/s [ 3263.4 IOPS] < 9785.80 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 13.039 MB/s [ 3183.3 IOPS] < 313.67 us>

Real world writes is closer to 119MB/s. Going to go pickup 3 of these today and test them.

Seagate picked up from costco was pretty fast tbh..At least for sequencial R/W. Definately slower in random R/W though. Real world sequential is 140 vs 120.. close enough tbh.

[Read]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 148.288 MB/s [ 141.4 IOPS] < 56223.26 us>
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 147.032 MB/s [ 140.2 IOPS] < 7127.49 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 1.290 MB/s [ 314.9 IOPS] < 99766.28 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 0.502 MB/s [ 122.6 IOPS] < 8144.27 us>

[Write]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 144.490 MB/s [ 137.8 IOPS] < 57647.99 us>
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 143.882 MB/s [ 137.2 IOPS] < 7283.21 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 7.291 MB/s [ 1780.0 IOPS] < 17920.50 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 5.101 MB/s [ 1245.4 IOPS] < 799.62 us>

Quote from black_mamba : thanks Covid.

More like "thanks Chia farmers"

Can the hard drive be removed from the enclosure and then put back in at a later date?