Hard Drive Bargain Watch

[DefDude]

Bestbuy has the WD 500GB for $119 this week.

if you have a c.c. near you they will give it to you for $113.99 with their 110% price guarantee. I got one today for that price because c.c had it priced at $179.99 today. and if you bought one at c.c. in the last 30 days at a higher price they will still give you the difference.

 

[Foxbat]

If CC will do that with the Seagate FreeAgent, I'll run over to their store and try it. Five year warranty on the FreeAgent vs. one year on the My Book Elements units (three years for the My Book Pro & Pro II).

 

[tawhite]

My local BB has a WD 750 MyBook Premium for $149? On the website it is $229? Is there a 2006 version and a newer version that is causing this difference? Which model is the one to buy for success?

I would double check that, was in BB yesterday and that drive is on sale for $199.

 

[shortspark]

Well, I'm even sorry I started this thread. I knew many of you (as well as myself) wanted a good external drive for the Aug. 15 roll out. I was all excited about this when I found it and thought I would share the great deal with you all right away only to find out the orders may not go through due to a possible price mistake. To top it all off, I have since found out this store has played these tricks before although I and many others have had good dealings with them in year's past. In any event, I hope no one gets the shaft buying this thing and who knows, there is a chance this is all legit - we shall see.

I received an email from PC Universe this morning saying the order can not go through because they made a price/model mistake. Oh well, I anticipated it as the WD deal was just too good to be true.

 

[wase4711]

just another reason to remember to deal with reputable folks on the internet..PC Universe has a horrible reputaion, so you shouldnt be surprised at how this went down..
"If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is"..

Between BB, CC, New Egg, Fry, Buy.com, or a few others, you should be able to find a very sharp price, as ext,HD prices have been tumbling for a long time now..

 

[shortspark]

just another reason to remember to deal with reputable folks on the internet..PC Universe has a horrible reputaion, so you shouldnt be surprised at how this went down..
"If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is"..

Between BB, CC, New Egg, Fry, Buy.com, or a few others, you should be able to find a very sharp price, as ext,HD prices have been tumbling for a long time now..

Yea, I know. I dealt with them before, however, and had no problems. Plus, the Amazon store ratings were very high, in the 90% range of the favorable bracket (of course I should have been leery of that since the sell a lot of their stuff on Amazon). Other sites rated them low. Besides, it really was too good to be true.

You're right about Newegg. They have some real good deals now and then. I will be on the watch but will use my WD My Book 250gb for the initial go around. I took it off my PC yesterday as I really did not use it that much as a backup (in a year I only used about 15 gigs of space). In fact, I may just back up what little I need with some pen drives or even floppy disks (I got a bunch of them just sitting around that have not been used in years. I can even use dvd disks for this purpose).

This WD will give me a good test basis for the 622 downloads before I run out and buy a bigger, dedicated drive. If I'm not mistaken, someone wrote that you can figure on a factor of 10 for HD so that should give me 25 hours of HD content to fool around with. By that time I hope we will get some of the bugs worked out and settle in on two or three brands that seem to work the best for this application.

 

[long_time_DNC]

Hooked up my Cavalry drive and it wouldn't power up. Nothing. DOA right out of the box. It goes back tomorrow for a replacement...

 

[John Kotches]

Hooked up my Cavalry drive and it wouldn't power up. Nothing. DOA right out of the box. It goes back tomorrow for a replacement...

A dumb question; you did use the external power cord right? A powered USB port doesn't have sufficient power to drive a 3.5" disk.

Cheers,

 

[long_time_DNC]

Yep, everything has power, as it should.

Here's the weird thing: when I turned my 622 off last night, *poof*, on came the USB drive and it was still running (I assume it was being reformatted) when I went to bed an hour later. When I got up this morning, the drive light was off, so I'm figuring that after it completed formatting, it went idle and eventually turned off. I turned on/off my 622 this morning to see if the drive would spin up...it didn't. Can't access it via the USB option in the DVR menu because I can't call and activate the external USB support yet. So, I have to wait until Wednesday to be sure the drive is ok, but I'm assuming that it is, after what it did last night... Thanks John!

 

[jdr01930]

"So, I have to wait until Wednesday to be sure the drive is ok"
You could just plug it into a PC and see what happens. That would at least confirm if the drive is toast...
Although Wednesday is only 12 hours 57 minutes away...

 

[long_time_DNC]

Found the problem. *bonk*

I had the drive's power supply plugged into a switched outlet on a surge protector....*sigh*

Plugged into an unswitched outlet on a different surge protector, turned it on and it spun right up. Connected it to my 622 and it immediately "saw" it, prompted me to allow it to reformat the drive, which I did, and about 10 minutes later it completed the reformat and the receiver rebooted.

So, in the morning, I'll make the call and get it activated and start moving stuff over to it.

 

[Tom in TX]

500 GB for $109.99

Frys has listed in the Dallas Morning News, a Maxtor 500GB for $109.99 ($50 off regular price). It is only good today, and tomorrow. The online price is still $159, so I don't know if all Frys have the same special, or just here in D/FW.

Tom in TX

 

[elbodude]

Frys has listed in the Dallas Morning News, a Maxtor 500GB for $109.99 ($50 off regular price). It is only good today, and tomorrow. The online price is still $159, so I don't know if all Frys have the same special, or just here in D/FW.

Tom in TX

Got that same ad here in Silly Con valley (San Jose, CA).

 

[wase4711]

careful with the Maxton external HD's..I and several collegues have had several failures with them, so I stick to seagate or Wester Digital..Maxtors are usually the cheapest, and now I undertstand why..

 

[elbodude]

careful with the Maxton external HD's..I and several collegues have had several failures with them, so I stick to seagate or Wester Digital..Maxtors are usually the cheapest, and now I undertstand why..

I agree. Now that Seagate owns Maxtor, things might be getting better.

 

[mrschwarz]

I ordered the 750 GB MY Book from PC Universe for $101. I got an email saying they canceled my order because of incorrect part numbers and prices. The only one I can find now is for $297.

 

[elbodude]

I ordered the 750 GB MY Book from PC Universe for $101. I got an email saying they canceled my order because of incorrect part numbers and prices. The only one I can find now is for $297.

$199 here...


Western Digital - 750GB External Hard Drive - WDG1U7500N

 

[Volitar Prime]

Results of playing around with the WDG1U5000N Essential connected to the VIP 622:

Tap the round button on front, it powers off completely (light turns off) and the 622 says "You have disconnected a multimedia device from the USB port. /OK/"

Tap the button again, the HDD turns back on, a few seconds later the 622 says " You've connected a multimedia device. Do you want to manage it? Yes/No/Help."

I just bought this same drive at Best Buy (great sale on it this week). Mine doesn't seem to have a power button. The round plastic within the green light ring doesn't press in. Am I missing something?

 

[robert393]

How 'bout this.............my actual reciept from Buy.com
I just ordered mine & get a $30 mail-in rebate. Final cost of $87.68!

1 Cavalry 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM 16MB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive $119.95
Shipping & Handling (Standard: 3 to 5 business days) : $7.73
Tax (TX) : $0.00
Google Checkout & Buy.com $10 Sign-up Bonus - Bonus may not appear on Buy.com's web site or emails. -$10.00
Total: $117.68

check HERE

Robert

 

[jdr01930]

I just bought this same drive at Best Buy (great sale on it this week). Mine doesn't seem to have a power button. The round plastic within the green light ring doesn't press in. Am I missing something?

Kinda weird - maybe they changed the design. I found the power button by accident, it was not mentioned in the documentation, so maybe that's the case. It's kinda useless for this application, because the 622 turns it on anyway, so to keep it off you'd have to hit the button every time you turn on Tv1/Tv2. As I mentioned before, the drive spins down appropriately when not in use, so that's good enough for me and I'm not using the power button anyway.