tl;dr Would it be a bad idea to consider a WD Blue in an enclosure as opposed to purchasing an EasyStore at capacities of 1-8 TB?
Parents need a quick solution to backing up their phone pictures. At first I was going to buy a used HDD like I did for myself, and that way when I build them a NAS/HTPC in the future I could easily add it to the pool. However, I saw the prices lately skyrocketed. I was going to buy them a 18TB but given the price hikes, I'm looking down to either a 4TB or 8TB now. To be honest they probably don't even need that much but I figured they could back up their phones too if they'd like.
I was considering grabbing an Easystore from BestBuy for them since it's readily available and the 8TB is for $170. However, out of curiosity I searched on Amazon for a WD Blue and it was for $140. Would it be bad if I purchase the WD Blue and a separate enclosure for it for another $15? Sure it's not much savings, but last time I used an external WD I remember being forced to use their software years ago and I wouldn't want to be limited to it again if that's the case.
On another note, the 5GB version of the EasyStore is $130 (no can't find 4) and a WD Blue is nearly half that at $70.