[thinkling]

The price we pay as consumers isn't going to be the same as that paid by Backblaze when they buy 100 drives at a time. The fact that they pick the WD Red implies that they're getting a better deal on those, otherwise they wouldn't settle for the higher failure rates.

EDIT: comments from BB employees below actually say they often buy off the shelf from NewEgg and Amazon.

[bluedino]

They posted on their blog that they wouldn't get discount pricing until they hit something like a 10,000 drive order.

[atYevP]

It's a darn shame. We would love to pay less for hard drives. Even at our current capacity, we're still a "small fish". And since we try to run lean we likely could buy 10,000 drives and keep inventory, but that doesn't necessarily work out for us in the long run as hard drive prices tend to fall monthly.

[atYevP]

Yea, unfortunately we aren't large enough to work directly with the manufacturers. We do buy from distributors sometimes, but if we can get a cheaper deal online, we'll go that route every time.