250gb $200

hmmm

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/3700356/

as compared to
same on pricewatch

That's not a bad deal, but I've seen 160GB Western Digital's (with 3 year warranties instead of the 1 year on the Maxtor) going for $70 after rebates. None of those deals running now, but with patience, I hope to jump on the next sub-$0.50 per gig Western Digital deal. I've had bad experiences with Maxtor drives, though others swear by them, and many people have their own Western Digital horror stories...

everyones gotta have a horror story. nature abhors a horror-free life.

My two-month old Maxtor drive just died last month. NO warning whatsoever. I had only backed up about 90% of it, so I lost some important files too.
That incomplete backup was my bad of course, but that was the last time I will ever have bought Maxtor again. This was the third time this happened to me with a Maxtor drive.

I'd have to second the Maxtor horror story. My favorite HDD brand is local Colorado, USA, favorite Quantum. Haven't heard a horror story about them yet, although I've got a sinking feeling that I may be about to.

Yep. I'm afraid I can provide a horror story about every hard disk manufacturer. Gets easier now that Quantum and Maxtor are the same people. My latest was having 2 Seagate drives die within 10 days of each other as part of the same RAID array. Fortunately we got a spare installed in between otherwise it would have been messy.

I've given up trying to find reliable drives, and instead insist only that my RAID arrays are made up of as many different makes as possible, to reduce the risk of near simultaneous disk failure.

See, I'd managed to block out that Maxtor/Quantum thing. Seagate Barracudas were the SCSI drives to have, back in the day, but I'd already heard of entire batches gone bad. Good idea about mixing drive brands (and vintages, maybe?) in every array....

My Maxtor 60GB just gave out after 3 1/2 years of good reliable service. I had about a weeks notice, and didn't really care because nothing of importance was on the drive. The drive actually still comes up, but after idle for a certain amount of time it "clicks" trying to read data, and eventually just stops trying to access. It's the first and only Maxtor drive I've ever had fail on me. I've never had a bad experience with Maxtor or Western Digital. Segate IDE drives on the other hand... Ack. I do have a pair of 10K Cheetah SCSI's right now that are wonderful and haven't had any problems with. I just need fo find the cash to put my RAID 5 box with >3TB of space in it. Then I won't worry about hard drive space, or crashing for a while. hehe

One of the drives (an IBM of some description) in my main desktop machine started intermittantly clicking three years ago (when it was a couple of years old) and is still struggling on. It spins down sometimes when it is feeling particularly unhappy, waits 10 seconds and spins back up. I've been expecting it to fail for at least 2 years now...

Don't worry, my all data is stored on my server ;-)

My IBM deskstar did that for two and half years before finally giving up.
Why is it that techie the world over do this with their hardware? Letting it die a lingering death?
Of course, in that two and half years, the price per G dropped dramatically so that limping IBM let me get a 120 instead of a 20.

I just jumped on a good deal on a 160GB Western Digital Caviar SE with 3yr warranty (details). A $70 rebate and $30 rebate (linked on the product page above) bring the price (before tax) down to $99, which yields a nice comfy $0.62/GB cost. Bought it at my local Best Buy to avoid shipping charges. Comes with a controller card as well. Not quite the 250 GB behemoth above, but enough storage for me, from a more reputable (IMHO) manufacturer, better warranty, and a lot cheaper per gig.

The rumor on the deals forums is people are finding 200GB models in 160GB boxes, which makes it an even better deal. I wasn't quite so lucky, but still find the 160GB to be a great deal.

Assuming you even get the rebates.

I've got a bad history of sending in for rebate checks and then never seeing the checks show up in my mailbox.

Assuming you even get the rebates.

I've got a bad history of sending in for rebate checks and then never seeing the checks show up in my mailbox.

Yeah some people don't do well with them. I've never had one denied or lost for any reason... Maybe I'm just lucky.

I've never had one denied or lost for any reason...

"Denied" is not the right word. I believe all of my rebate letters go into a void from whence they will never return.

little trick i learned about rebates is to ALWAYS mail the big ones certified. can save a lot of "we didn't get it, send again" hassles. you have the proof right there, on your stub.

I just jumped on a good deal on a 160GB Western Digital Caviar SE with 3yr warranty (details).

The page you linked to states that the warranty on the drive is only one year. Should I be worried?

Should I be worried?

Only if you enjoy being worried. Got mine today and it has "3 Year Warranty" clearly on the box. Best Buy probably just doesn't update their product pages much.

I've had a rebate denied once because they said it was not postmarked on time. This was crap I know I sent it in before the deadline, I called and complained a couple times and they eventually sent it to me. I have a feeling a lot of rebate processing center deny a certain percentage of rebates for BS reasons and see if people call in and complain. If they do they just claim "mistake" and send the rebate on it's way.

Assuming you even get the rebates.


Hell, I can't even get the hard drive!

I tried to order it, but their ordering/checkout program tells me that I have entered an invalid address.

I suspect my address is invalid in their eyes because it is in Alaska (Not continental US) and they don't want to honor their $3.00 two-day shipping offer which would cost considerably more than $3.00 to Alaska.

So, they didn't get my business.

tanstaafl.

From their site...

BestBuy.com currently ships to all U.S. residential and business addresses, U.S. P.O. boxes, APO/FPOs, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands. We do not offer international shipping.Last time I checked, Alaska isn't "international..." So it was probably some other error with their address verification. Very strange.

I don't suppose they have any brick-and-mortar Best Buy stores up there?

I don't suppose they have any brick-and-mortar Best Buy stores up there?


No.

If I don't hear back from them in the next hour and a half, then I'll go visit my local computer store. I have a $50 gift certificate I can redeem there, so I won't be cash out of pocket too much more than Best Buy would have been.

tanstaafl.

The WD2500BEVE is $100 shipped at:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10007592&prodlist=celebros

I ordered one.

- Chris

Hi,

These are the drives I am populating as pairs in my Empegs. They work well.

Ross

Is the WD2500BEVE the largest available PATA drive still?
And is it the only available brand of that size?

I'm just keeping an eye on things for a future capacity bump on our 24/7 server here, which functions on a single notebook drive (total power consumption of server is about 22W steady state).

It currently has a nice Seagate 160GB drive, so a bump to 250GB isn't really that big of a change, I suppose (+50% Mmmm..).

There is a free PCI slot on the mini-ITX mobo, though, so perhaps I'll dig up a low power consumption SATA card for it. Or maybe just use two notebook drives instead of one -- probably better for wattage that way.

Mmm..

Hi,

It was the largest I have found a month ago. I haven't seen anything larger since. The next bump should be 320 GB, but I haven't seen one that isn't SATA yet.

USB external drives are too slow.

To check that out, I purchased a WD2500 style 250 GB USB external drive. It is quite slow, but could be used for archive. Even with on drive cache, it was too slow for my taste. I thought that maybe I could still use the drive (hoping it was a USB to PATA/IDE) inside. You guessed it SATA drive, can't use it for an Empeg or my Gateway or HP Laptops. Guess if I use it, it will be a USB archive.

Ross