Yev from Backblaze here -> Unfortunately we aren't large enough to negotiate with hard drive manufacturers. We've tried, believe me, but since we're not putting

Yev from Backblaze here -> Unfortunately we aren't large enough to negotiate with hard drive manufacturers. We've tried, believe me, but since we're not putting in order of 10,000 drives at a time, they refuse to speak with us. The closest we get is an introduction to their preferred vendor channels, but we have to go through them like anyone else. At the time we did the "farming" it was because those channels had dried up and risen in price by almost 3x, and we were faced with going out of business or getting creative. I assure you, we would RATHER work with manufacturers directly, but it's not as easy as calling up Seagate and asking for a bunch of drives on the cheap (especially when computer companies like Dell and Apple need those drives to make THEIR product lines works). They can raise prices of their computers by a few dollars and not really feel an impact, we can't!