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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
Product Info
Community Notes
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Deal Details
Product Info
Community Notes
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
361 Reputation

309 Comments

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Pro
Mar 20, 2025 12:55 PM
10,552 Posts
Joined Nov 2006
CTRFK8
Pro
Mar 20, 2025 12:55 PM
10,552 Posts
Quote from TomarMcgregor :
My question is are recertified EXOS better than barracudas?
Yes way better
Mar 20, 2025 01:11 PM
234 Posts
Joined Apr 2014
tobytheneuterMar 20, 2025 01:11 PM
234 Posts
Quote from Guy767 :
RAID is expensive, especially for the average user who typically purchases a mainstream prebuilt NAS like a Synology. Then you need to buy the hard drives, which cost around $300 each for 20TB. (That's a conservative estimate, as high-quality NAS drives usually cost much more.)

So, you're looking at $500 for the Synology and $1,500 for five drives, two of which need to be reserved for Parity/RAID. That's $600 wasted to ensure virtually worthless and easily obtainable media, like Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, is available 24/7. Such nonsense simply isn't worth it, in my opinion.

It makes much more financial sense to consider retail video media as disposable and unworthy of backup or RAID, in my opinion. The method I employ uses media managing apps to curate and procure media quickly and automatically. There's no stress involved if I lose 20TB of videos, as the apps I use will quickly and automatically download their replacements. (20TB in 6 days at 40MB/s, and many people have faster internet speeds than that, so I'd surmise the average time for 20TB would be 3–4 days.)

Don't forget, rebuilding a 20TB drive from RAID can take weeks, according to this article [spiceworks.com]. So, simply auto-downloading the files via the media managing apps I'm alluding to would be a much more efficient and productive use of your time. Why productive, you ask? Because most likely, the files you get will be of higher quality and smaller file size thanks to advances in codecs and compression.

Overall, if you understood my methods and the tools I'm hinting at, you'd have a better appreciation of my side of the argument. Sorry, no stupid jokes this time—I'm too tired. I will say that I was only trying to be humorous and meant no offense. If I insulted you, then I apologize
You're pretty high up there on the troll spectrum. Congrats.
1
Original Poster
Mar 20, 2025 01:21 PM
193 Posts
Joined Apr 2016
swansong119
Original Poster
Mar 20, 2025 01:21 PM
193 Posts
Quote from Atilla :
When is someone going to put a 20 - 26TB Western Digital drive on sale?
When those go on sale, they are like $14-15 per TB. That's the lowest I've seen them go, the 20TB hd was on sale for $280 last month
Pro
Mar 20, 2025 02:24 PM
10,552 Posts
Joined Nov 2006
CTRFK8
Pro
Mar 20, 2025 02:24 PM
10,552 Posts
Quote from swansong119 :
When those go on sale, they are like $14-15 per TB. That's the lowest I've seen them go, the 20TB hd was on sale for $280 last month
White labels are red pros
some people say otherwise since there are no official specs. I have never had a smart error on my WD white labels that significantly degraded the drives health. I have some now powered on 4 years , 18TB
Only had one exo die after writing to it, probably shipping damage.
all my server part deals recerts 18TB exos are running great after 2 years.
Had one Iron wolf pro slow death

8TB SMR barracuda seagates were trash had a few just start creating bad sectors.

i managed over 3 PiB when farming chia.
over 130 drives
Mar 20, 2025 02:39 PM
7,921 Posts
Joined Mar 2005
flangomangoMar 20, 2025 02:39 PM
7,921 Posts
Quote from riffdex :
Again, you're conflating the fact that this particular guy invested a lot of money into a high capacity RAID setup with the idea that RAID costs a lot of money. In fact, the cost of the parity drives scales inversely with the total capacity, meaning the larger the total storage the more insignificant the cost of the parity was in relation to the total storage space accessible.

His setup is expensive because he has a ridiculously high amount of storage capacity. If you equalize for storage capacity, even if you chose to not have redundancy because (as you have admitted) you don't understand the benefit of RAID, you would spend practically the same as him for an equivalent storage capacity.

The idea that you claim RAID is so expensive because it costs more money to have a 448TB RAID config compared to a single 20TB HDD of data is a nonsensical take.
This is why I love UNRAID.
Original Poster
Mar 20, 2025 03:00 PM
193 Posts
Joined Apr 2016
swansong119
Original Poster
Mar 20, 2025 03:00 PM
193 Posts
People getting way too upset about how others spend their money in here lol
Pro
Mar 20, 2025 03:16 PM
10,552 Posts
Joined Nov 2006
CTRFK8
Pro
Mar 20, 2025 03:16 PM
10,552 Posts
Quote from flangomango :
This is why I love UNRAID.
is that really you in your avatar? Or your girlfriend lol

smart and cute
3

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Mar 20, 2025 03:17 PM
396 Posts
Joined Aug 2017
chadt3534Mar 20, 2025 03:17 PM
396 Posts
Quote from swansong119 :
People getting way too upset about how others spend their money in here lol
Yes, crazy stuff isn't it? Trying to make everyone believe that barracuda are absolute garbage don't buy them. Lol.
2
Mar 20, 2025 03:45 PM
42 Posts
Joined Mar 2017
UhsenLMar 20, 2025 03:45 PM
42 Posts
it's cheaper to get this than getting internal HDD
Mar 20, 2025 04:42 PM
1,003 Posts
Joined Dec 2017
InstanceNoodleMar 20, 2025 04:42 PM
1,003 Posts
Quote from swansong119 :
People getting way too upset about how others spend their money in here lol
This is slickdeal. Everything here is about cost shaving. We are very passionate.
Mar 20, 2025 04:44 PM
843 Posts
Joined Jul 2008
idrawdinosaursMar 20, 2025 04:44 PM
843 Posts
I shucked one last week, and there was a Barracuda in there.
Mar 20, 2025 05:11 PM
1,003 Posts
Joined Dec 2017
InstanceNoodleMar 20, 2025 05:11 PM
1,003 Posts
I did usb external drives, das, smr, unraid, trunas, synology, omv.

Usb drives are slow, the usb to sata adapter is usually bad, spinny gets knocked over, or table shakes mean death of the hdd.

Das, usually same speed as external, usb to sata adapter are usually better. Since it is bigger and heavier, the drives are less prone to knock over or shake.

Smr is fine in single drive configuration. If you don't mind it disappears for a while to move data around. Raid will not like this.

Unraid cost a bit to buy, you can free use. 30 caps on the array with about unlimited pool. Has zfs in pool. Hdd on the array can be set to spin up 1 at a time. Mover with ssd cache can prevent multiple spin up of parity drives.

Trunas is best for ssd. It has trim. Best speed because all drives spin up at once. Requires same size drive per zdev.

Synology is the easiest to use. Cost a lot for hardware. And usually cap out at 108tb per volume. Shr can do different size hdd.

Omv can use different drives and only parity at set time.


The separation with no parity is fine. No one is right or wrong. I use $400 (2x14 tb) so I don't have to waste my time freaking out, searching, buying a drive at a higher price (not on sale). I lost 28tb of space. But I don't need that space when I bought it. I use $450 (2x20tb) for the same. $150 (3x1tb) and $75 (3x 500gb). I hold 2 parity for each system to make upgrades easier. When I change a drive, I always have 1 parity. Moving 3tb of files in 1 sitting can kill your system. I usually do 500gb per move. But with the os, I can just let the system do the expansion. It might take more than a day, but I am still able to do everything as normal and don't have to waste time monitoring. I did both, and it was worth it to me. It might not be worth it to others.
Mar 20, 2025 05:33 PM
5,304 Posts
Joined Nov 2003
xcopyMar 20, 2025 05:33 PM
5,304 Posts
Quote from riffdex :
While my original comment affirmed the undeniable correlation between warranty period and expected life of a product, I find it interesting that you cling to your rigid interpretation of what the warranty period supposedly proves about the longevity of the internal drive when the exact same product had an EXOS drive mere weeks ago and now has a Barracuda drive while maintaining an identical 1 year warranty period, hence proving the often more arbitrary nature of the warranty period I refer to.
My "rigid interpretation"? Perhaps you're right and my decades of experience are no longer relevant and failure analysis no longer matters because companies aren't going to stand behind their products anyway. I had an old boss that would say "You lie and I'll swear to it". Of course it was supposed to be humorous about talking to clients, but it's not as outrageous as one might think.

You're also tacitly, but absolutely right that the EXOS drive represented a superior offering for a "consumer" price and device. They wanted to go to market with a one-year "product line" as opposed to a "drive" (a 26TB line), and the barracuda wasn't ready so they launched using a proven substitute until their inferior one was ready to go. It's been done before, but again, what they're really doing is establishing the line, not the drive. It's also called "Bait and switch".

What would you think if a car company disingenuously put a 3.0 liter engine in a car that would eventually come standard with a 2.2 liter engine without telling people, and then eventually selling the 2.2 as if nothing has changed? The 3.0 liter people would be happy; the rest.... Not so much. And that's what we see today.

It's done in software too, where early release products have x, y, and z, but later versions make Z a costly upgrade. I've seen it a lot, and you can too every time you turn on Netflix and watch commercials.

If they want to choose another way to evaluate risk of exposure, let them do it. If you choose to ignore experience as a teacher, that is your right. I'm also not suggesting that a product with a one-year warranty can't last for decades, because the market is full of them and always has been. I expect a hammer to last a life time. I still use - almost daily - an Acer laptop from 2010/2011 (best laptop I've ever bought, and I've had lots from many manufacturers, both personal and work supplied.

Do you remember that Seagate had a recent campaign of providing free data restoration after a drive failure? Seriously, who does that? Someone (a company) that recognizes their perception in the market place isn't good, or just a bunch of "nice people" offering an added benefit with their product? I know where I'm placing my bet....
2
Mar 20, 2025 06:13 PM
4 Posts
Joined May 2018
LookingForGreatDealsMar 20, 2025 06:13 PM
4 Posts
Yeah these are 26 TBs Cudas not EXOS, to those saying these are EXOS jokes on you because you're spilling out some bs before confirming it yourself that these are EXOS.
1

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Mar 20, 2025 06:25 PM
850 Posts
Joined Jun 2005
vmod32Mar 20, 2025 06:25 PM
850 Posts
Mine just showed up. Reports as ST26000DM000-3Y8103. I believe DM means BarraCuda :'(
Keep or return? I planned to move my Plex archives to this drive to free up space on my primary drive where new content lands.
1

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