Weird pricing (Not PCS)

[Tony1044]

First a bit of background:

I need to rebuild my NAS - it's got some weird behaviour going on right now whereby if I try to move more than a handful of files around at any time, it will drop the connections and essentially freeze.

I can't power it down or reboot it from the GUI and, despite being a business NAS, there's no shell. It needs a power off.

Then it might decide it needs to rebuild the array or not. Perfectly at random.

All the disks are reporting healthy and pass testing if they're pulled one by one and tested in a desktop.

The other thing that's annoying me about it right now, as well, is a lack of SMBv3 so I've got a decision to make on what to do with it - I am thinking to rebuild the entire array as iSCSI and set up a virtual server with Windows Storage Server. We'll see.

So...I decided that, as I have a mostly unused 8TB external drive that I'd buy a couple more 8TB drives for now, and rebuild a RAID 5 array from 3 x 8TB

I'll extend the array down the line with a 4th 8TB HDD.

Here's where it's odd for me - the HDD in my external unit is a NAS drive, ironically. I say ironically because the disks in my NAS aren't specifically NAS disks. That's fine by me.

8TB NAS disks are in the £200 per unit ballpark.

The same model of external unit as mine can be picked up from various online vendors for anything from £133 to £160. So that is the same drive, plus a case, cables and all the bits to make it work and the time and effort to manufacturer them for around 35% less than the cost of just the disks.

So even taking into account the fact that it'll be a lottery as to what disks are in the units - may be desktop disks or NAS disks - it still strikes me as a little odd that they choose to sell them at less than the cost of just a disk.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining - after all, it's to my benefit from a price perspective and I don't need high performance as the data written to and read from the NAS isn't particularly heavy (well once I've got it backed up and restored).

 

[ubuysa]

It's the market innit? They clearly don't want you to rebuild an existing NAS, they want you to buy a new one!

Selling a complete NAS also gives them the freedom to source whatever are the cheapest drives they can find at the time, which gives them a lot of flexibility.

Anyway, you know you'll enjoy the rebuild...

 

[Tony1044]

It's the market innit? They clearly don't want you to rebuild an existing NAS, they want you to buy a new one!

Selling a complete NAS also gives them the freedom to source whatever are the cheapest drives they can find at the time, which gives them a lot of flexibility.

I'm just talking new HDD vs the same HDD in a USB caddy though. The one in the caddy is cheaper.

Anyway, you know you'll enjoy the rebuild...

:hammer:

 

[Scott]

I've noticed that for YEARS. USB caddy's are exactly the same. I don't get why.

Years ago I bought a "USB" drive just so that I could tear it down and get the drive out it for around £20 less than the drive itself was. I thought it was madness to be honest but I wasn't looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I rebuilt my system a week or 2 ago and I was in a similar situation. I was going to do the same with a unit I saw but the reviews stated that there may be unique features now with skeletal parts of the drive not being quite the same as a standard unit, so I decided against it. I'm not convinced though

 

[Oussebon]

I've seen this too.

There's an external USB storage device that has 2 10TB HDDs in it for ~£450. And I've seen pricing on 8TB external HDDs for far less than internal ones, exactly as you say. Although the warranty implications and the fact I'm trying to avoid Seagate in favour of Toshiba at the moment means I haven't partaken.

 

[ubuysa]

You see, this is why I went into software and not hardware. With software you don't actually have to produce anything, you simply charge the UK government millions of pounds for a system that doesn't work and then relax on the beach in Barbados. You can't do that with a disk drive.

Later edit: I should point out that I never did that of course. I mean the Barbados bit - well and the 'system that doesn't work' bit too. All the systems I ever worked on were 100% available, perfectly performing, on budget, and in timescale. Honest...

 

[Oussebon]

I dunno. I'm pretty sure some companies charge inordinate sums for hardware that's dead but just doesn't know it yet, and/or is so weaksauce as to deliver meaningfully worse performance, including to the public sector. And by pretty sure I mean I'm 100% sure.

At a slight tangent I remember complaining to the IT department that they weren't supplying PCs with SSDs as an option in 2014. They said it wasn't offered by the manufacturer. So I went and found the datasheet for the exact model which listed 256gb SSDs as an option and seemed to predate the hardware catalogue refresh by some time... But it was fun waiting for the PC to restart for 5-10 minutes a pop and the database + server we used for the local office really liked being on an HDD.

Maybe HP had a surplus of HDDs they were keen to shift.

Public sector IT procurement really sucks, even down to the basic hardware, nevermind complex CRM type systems. Lets sellers get away with anything.

 

[Tony1044]

You see, this is why I went into software and not hardware. With software you don't actually have to produce anything, you simply charge the UK government millions of pounds for a system that doesn't work and then relax on the beach in Barbados. You can't do that with a disk drive.

Later edit: I should point out that I never did that of course. I mean the Barbados bit - well and the 'system that doesn't work' bit too. All the systems I ever worked on were 100% available, perfectly performing, on budget, and in timescale. Honest...

Standard approach when dealing with the public sector - bid low but ensure it's within razor narrow definitions. Anything outside of that scope? Change request that costs money.

As you know, it's why public sector contracts always go over budget and end up delayed.