You can find many interesting things at an estate sale. One Redditor from the data hoarder community recently struck gold at one and picked up 11 WD Easystore 8TB external hard drives for just $360. Fortune was certainly smiling on the individual as five of the 11 came free of charge.
The estate sale broker initially asked $90 per drive for what everyone thought was six drives, but the Redditor negotiated a great deal and bought all six for $60 each. After bringing them home, the data hoarder discovered five additional drives inside what were thought to be empty boxes. Despite attempts to return the extra drives, the broker told the buyer to keep them.
Overall, the individual spent $360 on all 11 8TB external hard drives, totaling 88TB of storage. This was an incredible bargain, as the data hoarder effectively paid about $4 per TB. For your reference, the WD Easystore 8TB usually sells for $169.99. This means the buyer got a fantastic deal, receiving $1,869.99 worth of storage for only $360. That's an incredible 81% saving.
Staying true to the data hoarder reputation, the Redditor schucked the WD Easystore drives to repurpose the hard drives for other purposes. The Easystore lineup uses various models, so which one you find depends on luck. In this case, the Redditor discovered five white label drives (WD80EMAZ) and four WD Red drives (including two WD80EFZX and two WD80EFAX). These hard drives were manufactured in 2017 and 2018.
It seems the WD Easystore drives weren't the only external hard drives on discount. The brokers also had about 10 Porsche Design-branded external drives priced at $120 each, along with eight WD My Book 2TB units for $75 each. Nonetheless, the Redditor focused more on the WD Easystore models to maximize value.
Shucking voids the warranty, but many data hoarders accept this risk because it's a cost-effective way to obtain high-capacity hard drives at lower prices. For the Redditor, the WD Easystore drives may already be out of warranty, so there's little to no risk. The future use of the shucked drives is unclear; they might be used in a NAS or RAID setup or sold for a profit.
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