Looking for a 120GB Hard Drive

[tonysolomon]

I know that I want 7200RPM, because that's faster than 5400.
I know I want 133MB/Sec data transfer, because that's faster than the 100MHZ.

What else should I look for?
What's the difference between ATA, EIDE, and any other types of hard drives out there?

I will probably partition the drive, so that I can speed up scandisks, trojan scans, virus scans, etc. I already have a working 30GB that I'm going to copy to the 120GB drive. I have WinME on the 30GB drive.

[Budfred]

Hello again,

The other thing I would look for is price. I believe it is CompUSA that has one on sale, but it could be Circuit City or BestBuy. If you can't find it I can look it up, but if you have the ads it was in today's paper. It may have been a 160 gig at CompUSA and a 120 at BestBuy. The 120 was something like $90 after rebates, so less than $1 per gig. I was tempted and I already have more hard drive than I can use....:)

The only significant difference with drives that you need to worry about is IDE, SCSI and SATA. SCSI won's work unless you have the setup for it. Most computers can use IDE. Serial ATA (SATA) is the next standard and is already available, but too expensive yet and not supported by most boards....

[tonysolomon]

Thanks Budfred, I'll check out that deal at BestBuy.

[Budfred]

I was wrong, my memory failed me. The really hot deal is at OfficeMax - a 120gig drive for $70 after rebates. WD if I am remembering correctly this time. This is just over 50 cents a GIG!!!:cool: :cool:

[Fruss Tray Ted]

:(

I went, no such animal on their site. Maybe you get emails for subscriber deals?

[Budfred]

This was in the weekly flyer with the Sunday paper, I didn't check the website for it since I already have an 80gig drive I haven't figured out what to do with. I can scan the ad and attach it if you need it. They may not offer it everywhere in the country though... Best bet may be to stop in one and see if you have one handy.

[tonysolomon]

That's an excellent deal. Are you sure it's not your local Office Max?
The best I can find online are about $1.00 per GB, once the drive is over 60GB.

[Budfred]

It appears that it is an in store deal, I will try to post a link to the ad, but not sure it will work:

Couldn't get it sorry. I can send it as an attachment, but can't figure out how to put it here....

[tonysolomon]

It didn't work.:(

Is it for a local area? What does the fine print say?

[Budfred]

If you go to www.officemax.com and click on your State, it will give you the option to view the weekly ad for your area. That may be the best way to see if it is available there...

http://www.officemax.com/max/solutions/product/prePrintSelect.jsp?bvc=yes

[tonysolomon]

Thanks, I'll do it right now. I love how quickly you respond. You are very dedicated and helpful. I recommend this forum to all of my friends. I hope to be on the helping side as time goes on. Many thanks to you Budfred and others on this forum who have helped me so many times. :)

[tonysolomon]

Best buy has a 120GB hard drive for $120. It has a spindle speed of 7200RPM and 8MB of cache. I think I'll go get that one.

[Budfred]

I am guessing you don't have an OfficeMax nearby, that one has similar parameters, but about $50 less. Oh well, either way it is a great deal...

[Flick]

Hi tonysolomon! Check out pricewatch. Many of the companies provide free or very low cost shipping! You can find a good HDD for a low price.



http://www.pricewatch.com/

[tonysolomon]

Thanks flick, I've checked pricewatch. I was going to go there, before Best Buy.

Budfred, you rock!! You were right-on regarding Office Max. I originally, went to Best Buy, and bought a Western Digital for $120. It was 120GB, 8MB cache, and 7200RPM.

Then I saw your post and took it more seriously. I thought it was too good to be true, or I needed a coupon. Then there's the fact that Office max is on the other side of the city. All of that made me choose Best Buy. I was getting a good deal. After seeing your last post about Office Max, I decided to call them and they offer the exact same one for $70 after rebate. I called Best Buy to see if they'd match it and they said they'd match the price of the hard drive before the rebate, so I just returned it.

I'm going to Office Max to get two tomorrow!! They are sold out and are expecting UPS to bring them some tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning. I'm shocked at the price. I hope they let me buy two. Thank you very much.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Are you sure the one from OfficeMax is an 8meg cache model? I looked over the ads and I think it is for a 2meg.. so if you're a gamer/video person you'd better look closely.

[killercow]

You can also watch Bensbargains.net he has a lot of deals of pretty much everything electronic. And if you want to go bigger try this 160gb WD hd for $129 pretty nice after rebates (http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=298017&cm_ven=Performics&cm_cat=Partner_k9470&cm_pla=BYOL&cm_ite=j892357&ref=performics)

[Budfred]

To confuse things further, MicroCenter just put out their ad for the first half of May and it includes a Maxtor 120gig for $90 after rebates and you can order by mail if you wish. Unfortunately, it only has a 2 meg cache. If you want to look anyway:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=143032

Also, you will probably only be able to get one rebate at OfficeMax, they usually limit it that way. They also only let you buy one drive per day. I just tried to find the drive on the WD website and it may have only the 2 MB cache, you may want to call them again to be sure if it is a long drive....

[tonysolomon]

I just bought two of the hard drives that I was talking about, at Office Max. There wharehouse is sold out and they've discontinued them. The first store that I called was sold out, but the second store had two left. I rode a long way, in bad weather and got bad customer service, but I got my drives. After tax, they were $158.99 and there is an $80 rebate for each one, so it's worth it. I don't know why I bought two, except for the excellent price. I have a 30GB that I originally wanted to back-up, but now I've got to 120GB drives. I have Partition Magic 8, but I haven't tried it yet. I'm not sure what to do yet? Any suggestions?

[hawk7771us]

here is a good link for store ads http://www.salescircular.com/

[Budfred]

Start doing lots of heavy duty graphics work and filming videos cause you have a whole lot of gigabytes to fill now....:D

I have an extra 80gig drive myself. I am thinking of taking that and a 40 gig I have and using them as hot swap drives. I plan to install a number of different operating systems on different partitions. I could use the hot swaps to hold a copy of Linux and some other option on at least one other partition. It is one of the drawbacks of getting caught up in sales....you have to figure out what to do with all that storage later.:D A lot more fun than the days when I had a 40meg drive and added two HardCard drives to bring it up to a huge total of something like 250megs....:rolleyes:

[tonysolomon]

I hear ya, I'm going to put about 150 rolls of film on my PC. I also have quite a lot of video tapes that I want to edit. I'm so glad, now, because I've got maximum RAM and hard drive space, and as of Saturday I'll have a cable modem. I thank you again for all of your help and especially your bargain hunting skills.

By the way, I forgot to mention that the way I'm going to get more than one rebate is to use two addresses.

[drdan]

Well, it looks like this is over and purchases made. I just put a WDC 8MB cache drive (80GB) in my computer and I was amazed at how much faster it is than my WDC 2MB cache (40GB), especially on bigger files like unresized pictures. The 8MB cache is definitely a plus.

[tonysolomon]

Good to know, drdan. I'm hooking up mine tomorrow night. :D

[Flick]

Hi tonysolomon! I went by Sam's Club today and they're selling the WD hard drive (160 GB with 8 MB cache) for $149.00. I thought to myself, "I'm going to tell tonysolomon about this when I get home". Guess I was too late. Good luck with your new toys!

[tonysolomon]

Thanks for the thought, Flick, but I've got a total of 240GB for $160, after tax and rebate. :D

[DT Geek]

the only bad thing is that you didn't follow your initial criteria. the wd drives are ata/100, and you wanted ata/133. for that, you would have had to go with the maxtor. newegg has the maxtor ata/133 with 8mb cache for $123. but hey, you can't always get what you want, and you did save a bundle.