External SSD Drive

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student
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External SSD Drive

Post by student »

I was buying an external SSD drive today and found that the price is much lower than the price from last year. (Samsung T7 2TB for $140.) Is supply chain back to normal? If so, maybe I can go back to more bargain shopping (and not worry about things not available).
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rob
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by rob »

I would not say normal but some of the component prices have dropped a lot from stupid highs.
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enad
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by enad »

Prices are falling, but I don't think we're back to normal
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student
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by student »

Thanks for the replies.
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WOMoney
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by WOMoney »

student wrote: Wed Mar 22, 2023 10:44 pm I was buying an external SSD drive today and found that the price is much lower than the price from last year. (Samsung T7 2TB for $140.) Is supply chain back to normal? If so, maybe I can go back to more bargain shopping (and not worry about things not available).
Id check here: https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condi ... ternal_ssd

Depends on if you're set on the Samsung or not, but seems 2TB is going for around 55 bucks a TB for the WD. $110 total
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student
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by student »

WOMoney wrote: Wed Mar 22, 2023 11:22 pm
student wrote: Wed Mar 22, 2023 10:44 pm I was buying an external SSD drive today and found that the price is much lower than the price from last year. (Samsung T7 2TB for $140.) Is supply chain back to normal? If so, maybe I can go back to more bargain shopping (and not worry about things not available).
Id check here: https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condi ... ternal_ssd

Depends on if you're set on the Samsung or not, but seems 2TB is going for around 55 bucks a TB for the WD. $110 total
Thanks for the link.
EZ James
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by EZ James »

I paid $50 at Costco online for a 2TB Seagate external SATA drive and $85 for a SandiskExtreme 1TB in the warehouse recently.
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by ClaycordJCA »

This topic is now in the Personal Consumer Issues forum.
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student
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by student »

ClaycordJCA wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 1:24 am This topic is now in the Personal Consumer Issues forum.
Thanks for moving. Not getting enough sleep and posting in the wrong place.
rich126
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by rich126 »

I haven't built a computer in a while but https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ was a good site where you could enter parts and see the history of prices.
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student
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by student »

rich126 wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 7:23 am I haven't built a computer in a while but https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ was a good site where you could enter parts and see the history of prices.
Thanks. I also use camelcamelcamel to track price from Amazon.
02nz
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by 02nz »

SSD prices fell a lot in the past few months, supposedly because of excess inventory. I don't know if you should draw conclusions from that about the broader supply chain, but anyway my sense is the PC supply chain was not disrupted to the same extent as others, even during the height of the pandemic.
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by student »

02nz wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 7:49 am SSD prices fell a lot in the past few months, supposedly because of excess inventory. I don't know if you should draw conclusions from that about the broader supply chain, but anyway my sense is the PC supply chain was not disrupted to the same extent as others, even during the height of the pandemic.
Thanks for the comment. Thinking back, I think you are right. I bought a laptop during that time and it was a pretty good deal by normal standard.
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by dukeblue219 »

NAND flash and DRAM are essentially commodities and have price swings accordingly. Right now flash is exceedingly cheap and there is ample supply. However, it doesn't really have any bearing on automotive sensors or refrigerator controllers; the fabs to build one type of microcircuit are vastly different from another and capacity can't adjust for market needs. So, I would still expect to see issues on some products even when others have a glut.
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by nisiprius »

I'm mulling over a new computer and possibly a new external SSD to go with it, and in my quick first-cut searches I found I was getting confused by SanDisk having acquired G-Technology, a provider of external rotating drives. So you can now have the SanDisk brand name on a rotating drive. Google, Amazon, etc. not at all clever about identifying SSD versus rotating drives correctly, and my searches for "SSD drives" often included rotating drives.

(My motivation for the external drive is that Time Machine and BackBlaze don't offer a path to quick recovery if the internal drive on a computer goes bad. So I like to make periodic bootable clones of my internal drive to sufficiently fast external drive.)
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
johnnyc321
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by johnnyc321 »

Better but not back to normal.

My anecdotal evidence is that we just submitted a warranty claim on our new Samsung disaster two weeks ago because the LEDs stopped working. They have no spare parts and are instead sending us an entire new dishwasher.

However TV prices have dropped like crazy.
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by mega317 »

johnnyc321 wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 9:23 am Samsung disaster
Freud for message boards. This is perfect.
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student
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by student »

dukeblue219 wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:16 am NAND flash and DRAM are essentially commodities and have price swings accordingly. Right now flash is exceedingly cheap and there is ample supply. However, it doesn't really have any bearing on automotive sensors or refrigerator controllers; the fabs to build one type of microcircuit are vastly different from another and capacity can't adjust for market needs. So, I would still expect to see issues on some products even when others have a glut.
Thanks for the info.
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student
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by student »

nisiprius wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:21 am I'm mulling over a new computer and possibly a new external SSD to go with it, and in my quick first-cut searches I found I was getting confused by SanDisk having acquired G-Technology, a provider of external rotating drives. So you can now have the SanDisk brand name on a rotating drive. Google, Amazon, etc. not at all clever about identifying SSD versus rotating drives correctly, and my searches for "SSD drives" often included rotating drives.

(My motivation for the external drive is that Time Machine and BackBlaze don't offer a path to quick recovery if the internal drive on a computer goes bad. So I like to make periodic bootable clones of my internal drive to sufficiently fast external drive.)
Yes. One has to be careful. I bought the Samsung T7.
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student
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by student »

johnnyc321 wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 9:23 am Better but not back to normal.

My anecdotal evidence is that we just submitted a warranty claim on our new Samsung disaster two weeks ago because the LEDs stopped working. They have no spare parts and are instead sending us an entire new dishwasher.

However TV prices have dropped like crazy.
Thanks for the info.
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by zlandar »

Some items. SSD prices have dropped a lot.
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by johnnyc321 »

mega317 wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 9:30 am
johnnyc321 wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 9:23 am Samsung disaster
Freud for message boards. This is perfect.
Haha! Typo…or maybe not!
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by iamlucky13 »

It seems like computer component prices never cease to give us reasons to marvel. Out of curiosity, I just looked up the first SSD I had purchased, which was a 256 GB Crucial MX series, for $112. Today a 2 TB Crucial MX series is $129.

8 times the capacity 8 years later for very close to the same price (actually cheaper if I adjust for inflation).
nisiprius wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:21 amGoogle, Amazon, etc. not at all clever about identifying SSD versus rotating drives correctly, and my searches for "SSD drives" often included rotating drives.
I find using text searches to find products when there are numerous options to choose from an unreliable technique, for the reasons you have experienced and many others. If a retailer has a well-sorted website, I find it more reliable to sort through the menus or filters.

You can use Amazon's menus to drill down to external hard drives, but unfortunately, you can not filter from there to SSD's. And I've encountered numerous products miscategorized on Amazon over the years.

In contrast, with Newegg, for example, I can use the menus to drill down: Components > Storage Devices > SSDs > External SSDs. Then I select the filter for "Sold by Newegg" to avoid the unknown third party retailers they also act as a sales platform for, and if I want, I can also filter by size, brand, price, interface, etc.

And Newegg pricing is usually similar to or better than Amazon for computer components.
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by ubermax »

For an external drive I was advised to get one utilizing a spindle rather than SS because recovery of data is easier in the case of a malfunction - I have a Western Digital 1 Terabyte - Model is My Passport Ultra .
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by tibbitts »

ubermax wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 10:19 am For an external drive I was advised to get one utilizing a spindle rather than SS because recovery of data is easier in the case of a malfunction - I have a Western Digital 1 Terabyte - Model is My Passport Ultra .
Normally you would always have at least two external drives. I've had conventional drives fail gradually, and been able to recovery data myself from them, and maybe that would be less likely with an SSD. However I've also had conventional drives fail completely without obvious warning, and if you mean for a data recovery service, recovery from any type of drive would likely be prohibitively expensive for most consumers.
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Re: External SSD Drive

Post by joppy »

nisiprius wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:21 am I'm mulling over a new computer and possibly a new external SSD to go with it, and in my quick first-cut searches I found I was getting confused by SanDisk having acquired G-Technology, a provider of external rotating drives. So you can now have the SanDisk brand name on a rotating drive. Google, Amazon, etc. not at all clever about identifying SSD versus rotating drives correctly, and my searches for "SSD drives" often included rotating drives.

(My motivation for the external drive is that Time Machine and BackBlaze don't offer a path to quick recovery if the internal drive on a computer goes bad. So I like to make periodic bootable clones of my internal drive to sufficiently fast external drive.)
Somewhat off topic but bootable backups on Mac are getting more difficult. Take a look at this summary of bootable backups on Macs: https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/cloning-mac ... re-restore
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