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HP LTO-5 drives from Serversupply.com too good to be true?
Has anybody ever ordered from serversupply.com?
I’m shopping for an LTO-5 external drive; every time I do a google search for HP Ultrium 3000, this reseller comes up. Many of their HP LTO drives say “new” with 3 years HP warranty. They are selling the more expensive Ultrium 3280 full-height drives for the price of the Ultrium 3000 half-height drives, which makes me very suspicious. What do you guys think?. Your opinion is greatly appreciated.
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3 Replies
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The main thing that you need to keep in mind is that HP never sold full height LTO-5 SAS drives outside of OEM and automation configurations. That means that these drives are the result of a “dumping” activity.
I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, just explaining why the pricing is so unbelievable
I did check with my reps and they are under the 3 year warranty, but you may need to press the HP support rep if you run into an issue since their books all say that no such device exists.
At that price, I’d recommend you grab one quickly before they’re all gone.
They work great with all of the major tape archival solutions on Mac, Windows, Linux and most other systems.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Very interesting information Tim.
The drives I’m talking about are full-height external with mini SAS connection. I went to the HP official site and finally found the information I was looking for. After you select the drive you want, there is an option to “buy online”. When I click on that button I get a list of resellers and one of them is “serversupply.com”. So, I guess it is safe to assume that this is not gray market product. I’m going to contact HP anyways, just to be sure.
The drives I’m looking into are:
Ultrium 3280 (full-height)
– EH900A, EH900BUltrium 3000 (half-height)
– EH958A, EH958B, EH958SBDon’t know what the suffix mean.
I have an Atto R680 Host Bus Adaptor on the way that was included in a G-Technology storage system bundle. Planning on using this setup in combination with HP StoreOpen with LTFS software on Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7. Also, will test on Windows 7 Pro via Bootcamp. If I’m not satisfied with the performance and workflow, then I will consider BRU PE.
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Something very weird happend when I went back to the HP Storage website. Now when I go to the LTO drive product information page, instead of “BUY NOW”, the button says “FIND A LOCAL RETAILER”. Makes me think that what I saw the other day was some kind of haked into their site by online retailers.
What it is for sure, is that the HP sales rep I talked to over the phone had no clue about what could have cause the discrepancy (bug) in the system. The other thing he could’t confirm was if ServerSupply.com is an authorized reseller. So I’m still shopping for a HP Ultrium 3000 LTO-5 drive. I just can’t pay the $2,899 plus tax HP is asking for. Why are LTO drives so expensive and difficult to buy?
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