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expiredswansong119 posted Mar 17, 2025 06:25 PM
expiredswansong119 posted Mar 17, 2025 06:25 PM

26TB Seagate External USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive

+ Free Shipping

$300

$350

14% off
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Best Buy has 26TB Seagate External USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive with Rescue Data Recovery Services (STKP26000400) on sale for $299.99. Shipping is free.

Thanks to community member swansong119 for finding this deal.

Editor's Notes

Written by megakimcheelove | Staff
  • 1-year warranty
  • Please see the original post for additional details & give the WIKI and additional forum comments a read for helpful discussion.

Original Post

Written by swansong119
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About the Poster
Best Buy has 26TB Seagate External USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive with Rescue Data Recovery Services (STKP26000400) on sale for $299.99. Shipping is free.

Thanks to community member swansong119 for finding this deal.

Editor's Notes

Written by megakimcheelove | Staff
  • 1-year warranty
  • Please see the original post for additional details & give the WIKI and additional forum comments a read for helpful discussion.

Original Post

Written by swansong119

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Model: Seagate - Expansion 20TB External USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive with Rescue Data Recovery Services - Black

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Top Comments

Adam2004
378 Posts
55 Reputation
These (26GB) are EXOS Enterprise drives not the crappy non-Pro Barracudas like the 20-24TB models with only 1-year warranty. Seagate doesn't make a 26TB Barracuda.
RikB
346 Posts
213 Reputation
I ordered one, says it'll arrive Thursday. I'll update this post with what I find inside.

Edit: ST26000DM000 mfg date 02/2025. Seagate website indicates the serial # on the drive is a Barracuda w/ 1yr warranty. Oh well, looks like the days of discount exos are gone, and I'll be returning this one.
ducksoup18
1374 Posts
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309 Comments

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Mar 19, 2025 05:49 PM
823 Posts
Joined Aug 2012
riffdexMar 19, 2025 05:49 PM
823 Posts
Quote from stag3 :
Damn, should I cancel the order, not worth the drive to BB if it's a Barracuda.
Cancel it if a Barracuda is a dealbreaker for you. Personally I'm no longer interested in the drive since all the data we have so far points to Barracudas inside.
Mar 19, 2025 05:52 PM
5 Posts
Joined Jun 2018
KurisuuuMar 19, 2025 05:52 PM
5 Posts
ST26000DM000-3Y8103 here, back to returns you go
Mar 19, 2025 05:59 PM
471 Posts
Joined Dec 2018
wordageMar 19, 2025 05:59 PM
471 Posts
If anyone is interested, they seem to be available again at Best Buy--no sold out blocking.
Mar 19, 2025 06:05 PM
34 Posts
Joined Jan 2025
fmabgagloitMar 19, 2025 06:05 PM
34 Posts
Quote from jhart4084 :
ST26000DM000-3Y8103 from CrystalDiskInfo

Google search shows Exos. Search on Seagate with serial# shows IronWolf NAS
Seagate support just confirmed that ST26000DM000-3Y8103 is a barracuda drive.
1
Pro
Mar 19, 2025 06:05 PM
3,012 Posts
Joined May 2011
Guy767
Pro
Mar 19, 2025 06:05 PM
3,012 Posts
Quote from galewskj :
CTRFK8 is good at that.

Back to the relevant topic, I'm also seeing the DM in the part number to indicate a Barracuda drive.
Yeah, I think it's safe to assume that the newest batch of Seagate externals are all Barracudas regardless of size.

To Seagate's credit, the 1-year warranty only applies if you live in the USA. In Europe, the exact same external comes with a 3-year warranty I believe. I guess Europe has better consumer rights and protections, shame, really. Regardless, Seagate seems confident that the drive will last 3 years, so that's a good thing, I guess.

In my opinion, Best Buy is playing us all by letting the item sell out, waiting a few days, and then making it available again. They seem to be creating a FOMO rush; act quickly and buy now is a common underhanded seller tactic. Since the retail price for these 26TB drives is $350, I'm not in any rush to purchase. Sorry, Best Buy.
Last edited by Guy767 March 19, 2025 at 12:09 PM.
Mar 19, 2025 06:08 PM
5,305 Posts
Joined Nov 2003
xcopyMar 19, 2025 06:08 PM
5,305 Posts
WD provides a minimum of 2 years, while Seagate gives you 1 year. They know things that you don't.

WD is a pirate organization holding people hostage with their offensive and egregious prices (check their stock price and news on earnings).

As much as I loath WD, it's a hard NFW on buying seagate for me.
Mar 19, 2025 06:21 PM
194 Posts
Joined May 2012
stag3Mar 19, 2025 06:21 PM
194 Posts
oh well, waiting for the next deal, order cancelled Smilie

edit: reddit thread has people chiming in they're getting Barracuda's as well.
Last edited by stag3 March 19, 2025 at 01:52 PM.

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Mar 19, 2025 06:24 PM
47 Posts
Joined Nov 2016
MoetopMar 19, 2025 06:24 PM
47 Posts
Quote from MWink :
I'm curious if this was an intentional nod to the fact that Quantum (a major HD manufacturer long ago) was bought by Maxtor, which was bought by Seagate?
No it wasn't intentional. Although I have owned a few Quantum drives. Surprised I didn't catch that when i was typing it.
Pro
Mar 19, 2025 06:40 PM
10,553 Posts
Joined Nov 2006
CTRFK8
Pro
Mar 19, 2025 06:40 PM
10,553 Posts
Barracuda 26TB specs most likely the same as the 20-24TB Barracudas

150TB workload vs 550TB workload on EXOs
2400 hours or 100 days vs 24/7 ,365 a year on time for Exos


Make your move i dare you Smilie


I like my data not being corrupted

Barracuda is great for desktop use but going up this size no one and i mean no one should be using a 24TB+ hard drive without parity.

This is ridiculous to offer a drive to a consumer which even most people nowadays are using a NAS or some sort of software, even windows 10-11 offers storage spaces running disks 24/7 or in raid.

With windows storage spaces , You can do raid 5 or raid 1 mirror, even if you cannot do a LAN over 2.5Gbps, you can easily run 3 of these in raid 5 and one parity disk
If anyone is interested going this route without a NAS you could probably get easily 600MB/s on 3 of these disks with 1 parity on your local gaming pc

I know there is not alot of people out there running over 2.5Gbps networks so if you want to go this route it would only require 3 slots in your case
Windows would report 47.2937TB
Last edited by CTRFK8 March 19, 2025 at 12:44 PM.
Mar 19, 2025 06:41 PM
823 Posts
Joined Aug 2012
riffdexMar 19, 2025 06:41 PM
823 Posts
Quote from xcopy :
WD provides a minimum of 2 years, while Seagate gives you 1 year. They know things that you don't.

WD is a pirate organization holding people hostage with their offensive and egregious prices (check their stock price and news on earnings).

As much as I loath WD, it's a hard NFW on buying seagate for me.
Warranty periods are correlated with how long the drive is "expected" to last, but it's actually more highly correlated with the COGS and profit margins associated with the product.

Seagate could take identical internal HDDs and make one into a external HDD product that sells for $350 offering a 1 year warranty, and make another into a product that sells for $450 offering a 2 year warranty, and the increased profit margin of the second product will support the increased warranty claims associated with the longer period of coverage.

Same applies to why a WD external may have a higher retail price and offer a 2 year warranty over Seagate's 1 year. It's not as simple to say "Seagate knows the drive will only last approximately one year".

It's possible that Seagate had an oversupply of EXOS drives at one time and approached these big box stores such as Best Buy/B&H Photo to negotiate a large volume deal, meaning they were asking the stores to commit to buying a certain number of units for an external drive product that could be sold there, the big box stores said they could pay $X/unit, which was lower than Seagate was wanting.

Seagate crunches the numbers and determines that they can sell Best Buy/B&H Photo at that rate they asked for, all they need to do is reduce their warranty period from 3 years to 1 year to accommodate that price point. So you end up with an EXOS drive (in the case of those lucky ones who got the original batches) that arguably has an expected life of at least 3+ years, in a lower priced product, with a lower warranty period in place. It's not the same as Seagate admitting the drives are only expected to last 1 year. It's just how business works sometimes.

They also may have determined the warranty structure on this particular product knowing that once they ran out the surplus of EXOS drives, they will transition to newly produced Barracudas which inherently are cheaper to manufacture and will, by design, have shorter lifespans on average.
Pro
Mar 19, 2025 06:59 PM
3,012 Posts
Joined May 2011
Guy767
Pro
Mar 19, 2025 06:59 PM
3,012 Posts
Quote from CTRFK8 :
Barracuda 26TB specs most likely the same as the 20-24TB Barracudas

150TB workload vs 550TB workload on EXOs
2400 hours or 100 days vs 24/7 ,365 a year on time for Exos


Make your move i dare you Smilie


I like my data not being corrupted

Barracuda is great for desktop use but going up this size no one and i mean no one should be using a 24TB+ hard drive without parity.
I don't know, man; I think using parity, RAID, or whatchamacallits to back up easily obtained and ubiquitous video data, like My Mother the Car and Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, is quite ridiculous and superfluous.

If the hard drive containing that 'precious' data crashes, you can simply procure such tripe quickly and easily—often at better compression rates and quality. The 'backups' are already available for such data, so backing them up again seems quite absurd and a huge waste of time and resources, in my opinion.

Overall, you shouldn't get weirdly attached to your video media. Externals like these work perfectly for my simple Plex Media Server setup. They spin up/power on when I need them and power down/sleep when not in use. However, if I were an advanced user streaming to multiple people 24/7, I'd definitely go with top-of-the-line enterprise NAS drives of course.
1
Pro
Mar 19, 2025 07:18 PM
10,553 Posts
Joined Nov 2006
CTRFK8
Pro
Mar 19, 2025 07:18 PM
10,553 Posts
Quote from Guy767 :
I don't know, man; I think using parity, RAID, or whatchamacallits to back up easily obtained and ubiquitous video data, like My Mother the Car and Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, is quite ridiculous and superfluous.

If the hard drive containing that 'precious' data crashes, you can simply procure such tripe quickly and easily—often at better compression rates and quality. The 'backups' are already available for such data, so backing them up again seems quite absurd and a huge waste of time and resources, in my opinion.

Overall, you shouldn't get weirdly attached to your video media. Externals like these work perfectly for my simple Plex Media Server setup. They spin up/power on when I need them and power down/sleep when not in use. However, if I were an advanced user streaming to multiple people 24/7, I'd definitely go with top-of-the-line enterprise NAS drives of course.
I know you are trying to justify your purchase or justify not using some sort of parity for a huge drive size. 26TB to redownload movies would take alot of time not everyone has 100MB/s download and I almost guarantee you that you wont get that speed on every file you have to redownload.
Also who has the time to do this? This is why parity and raid with parity exists.
I can tell you never used true nas or unraid
You are doing it wrong , even a simple synology box would be a better setup than yours.
1
Pro
Mar 19, 2025 07:41 PM
3,012 Posts
Joined May 2011
Guy767
Pro
Mar 19, 2025 07:41 PM
3,012 Posts
Quote from CTRFK8 :
I know you are trying to justify your purchase or justify not using some sort of parity for a huge drive size. 26TB to redownload movies would take alot of time not everyone has 100MB/s download and I almost guarantee you that you wont get that speed on every file you have to redownload.
Also who has the time to do this? This is why parity and raid with parity exists.
I can tell you never used true nas or unraid
You are doing it wrong , even a simple synology box would be a better setup than yours.
According to this article [spiceworks.com], the average time to rebuild a 20TB drive via RAID is about 2 weeks. My setup can automatically download any missing or corrupted video media in the event of a hard drive crash, and even at my relatively slow speed of 40MB/s, it would only take 6 days. This actually happened to me with a 14TB external about 2 years ago. Plus, the newly procured files are likely to be of higher quality and smaller file sizes due to advances in video codecs and compression.

In my opinion, spending a fortune backing up easily obtainable video data via expensive RAID and NAS server setups like Synology is unnecessary and a waste of money. A cheap, refurbished Dell enterprise-grade machine with a few externals attached should be more than adequate for most people's Plex Media Server needs.

Of course, if you want to be streaming 24/7, you'll need something more durable, like enterprise-grade NAS drives. The key is not becoming overly attached to your video collection and realizing that it's all easily retrievable—especially if you have the media managers and downloaders set up to handle it.
1
Mar 19, 2025 07:50 PM
673 Posts
Joined Dec 2010
ChargerSRT8Mar 19, 2025 07:50 PM
673 Posts
Quote from Guy767 :
According to this article [spiceworks.com], the average time to rebuild a 20TB drive via RAID is about 2 weeks. My setup can automatically download any missing or corrupted video media in the event of a hard drive crash, and even at my relatively slow speed of 40MB/s, it would only take 6 days. This actually happened to me with a 14TB external about 2 years ago. Plus, the newly procured files are likely to be of higher quality and smaller file sizes due to advances in video codecs and compression.In my opinion, spending a fortune backing up easily obtainable video data via expensive RAID and NAS server setups like Synology is unnecessary and a waste of money. A cheap, refurbished Dell enterprise-grade machine with a few externals attached should be more than adequate for most people's Plex Media Server needs.Of course, if you want to be streaming 24/7, you'll need something more durable, like enterprise-grade NAS drives. The key is not becoming overly attached to your video collection and realizing that it's all easily retrievable—especially if you have the media managers and downloaders set up to handle it.
I just lost 1 8tb drive of 8 drives on data I built. I'm going unraid this weekend with all new 5 24tb so I can run parity. I want my system to be up running and I don't want retrieve my data. I rather pop in a drive when it fails and let it do its work for 2 weeks. I don't care, as long as it's not me.

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Mar 19, 2025 07:53 PM
823 Posts
Joined Aug 2012
riffdexMar 19, 2025 07:53 PM
823 Posts
Quote from Guy767 :
According to this article [spiceworks.com], the average time to rebuild a 20TB drive via RAID is about 2 weeks. My setup can automatically download any missing or corrupted video media in the event of a hard drive crash, and even at my relatively slow speed of 40MB/s, it would only take 6 days. This actually happened to me with a 14TB external about 2 years ago. Plus, the newly procured files are likely to be of higher quality and smaller file sizes due to advances in video codecs and compression.

In my opinion, spending a fortune backing up easily obtainable video data via expensive RAID and NAS server setups like Synology is unnecessary and a waste of money. A cheap, refurbished Dell enterprise-grade machine with a few externals attached should be more than adequate for most people's Plex Media Server needs.

Of course, if you want to be streaming 24/7, you'll need something more durable, like enterprise-grade NAS drives. The key is not becoming overly attached to your video collection and realizing that it's all easily retrievable—especially if you have the media managers and downloaders set up to handle it.
You're conflating things. Just because there are expensive devices that can be purchased for a redundant backup system doesn't mean having redundant systems is expensive. I built a PC with a bunch of old parts and use free software to maintain a RAID based system.

My main concern is the ridiculously high cost of the time and the manpower associated with replacing said data if I didn't understand the absurdly low cost of simplifying things by maintaining local redundancy.

Your system where you don't have to track down the data in the event of a HDD failure is frankly unique and not applicable to the majority of the people who might be concerned about the time wasted as a result of a 26TB HDD failing.
Last edited by riffdex March 19, 2025 at 02:11 PM.

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