[freshyill]

With the volume you must buy in, why not buy direct from the manufacturers? I imagine they could supply you with their OEM pricing and product packaging, which seems like it would save money? Or is it a strategic reason like not getting stuck with one manufacturer?

[grecy]

I asked that question last time BB employees were here on HN.. the answer was they just don't buy enough volume to qualify to buy direct from the manufacturers. It sounds like you must but enormous quantities before the manufacturers will give you the time.

[atYevP]

Unfortunately that's still the case (Yev here, from Backblaze). Minimum orders are around 10,000 unites, and we're just not there yet. Thinking about starting a consortium though, so if anyone needs hard drives... ;-)

[StuckInTexas]

That is absolutely untrue. Talk to the big distributors, they will also be able to fix your incredibly unstable supply chain.

[atYevP]

We currently work with Distributors. I was referring to the manufacturers themselves, like buying directly from Seagate/WD. We currently work with a few different distributors to get different types of drives.