External USB harddrive deal at Wal-Mart

[Radioguy41]

I just picked up the following at my local Wal-Mart:

Seagate Expansion External Drive:
500GB Capacity 3.5" 7200RPM Drive
USB 2.0 (Cable Included)
Power Supply Included
2 Year Factory Warranty

$50.00

Amazon is currently selling them for $77.24 plus shipping.

For $5.88 Wal-Mart will extend the warranty to a third year.

Not a bad deal.

 

[truckracer]

nice find

 

[dfergie]

For more bang (or gigs) for the buck go for the $89 1 TB WD My Book or the $129 1.5 TB Seagate ...

 

[Bill_KY]

If you live in ... Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio or Kentucky.

Meijers has a sale on a 1 TB external hard drive for $89. Then with the "Santa Bucks" you get a additional $16 off, the "Santa Bucks" are for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday only. That is $73 for a 1 TB Seagate external hard drive.


hxxp://meijer.shoplocal.com/meijer/default.aspx?action=entryflash&storeref=151

(replace the xx with tt)

Browse General merchandise to page 6.

 

[Larry1]

Our local Wal-mart has an external 1TB for $99, and 1.5TB for $128 (Canadian).

During Black Friday, I had a friend pick me up a WD 1TB external in the US for $65.

 

[Mr Tony]

nice prices...saw one on clearance at my local walmart for dirt cheap but didnt pick it up (wish I had)

 

[Larry1]

nice prices...saw one on clearance at my local walmart for dirt cheap but didnt pick it up (wish I had)

Keep an eye out on the web sites once the stores close on Chrismas eve. (Remember some stores start their online boxing day sales as soon as the stores close on Chrismas eve) Should be some great shopping deals this year.

 

[Mr Tony]

no boxing day here in the states though

 

[Tron]

Be wary of the Seagate 1 and 1.5 TB hard drives (both internal and external, since they use the same drive in the external enclosures). There was an issue with bad firmware that caused data loss earlier in the year. It has since been reported to be corrected in more recent firmware revisions, but you would definitely want to flash the drive to the latest firmware before putting anything on it.

 

[Anole]

I keep an eye out for such deals.
Last year, maybe March (?), I got a 750gb external Western Digital USB drive at Wal-Mart just 'cause that older model was being phased out.
I think it rang up to $40 including tax. (shame they only had one by the time I got there)

Right now is a good season to find bargains, but they do turn up all year long.

 

[Mikhel]

Yesterday i saw pretty good deals at Fry's too, 1 TB external HDD for 70 bucks, and 500 GB HDD at 60 dlls.

M.

 

[Anole]

I'm not recommending one way or another, but here is a $40 250gb 2½ inch SATA drive as an alternative:
FRYS.com*|*Seagate

Seagate 250GB 2.5" Serial ATA/300 Notebook Retail Boxed Hard Drive - ST9250827AS-RK
[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]Seagate:[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]FRYS.com #: 5517290[/FONT]

edit: oops, sorry... it's an internal drive, not external USB... never mind -
Well, it'd still be an attractive drive for some receivers, I suppose.

The point is, keep your eyes open - good things come to those who browse.

 

[Bill_KY]

Black Friday I picked up a 1 TB Seagate for $69 at Staples.

 

[Anole]

internal SATA:

Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB for $62.99 Free Shipping

The WD Black series are their faster drives, with the bigger caches.

If you were looking for a high performance internal SATA drive for a receiver, or something fast to boot your computer with, this might be attractive.
I got two from Amazon for about this price last summer, and thought it was a steal.
Today, you might want to shop around.

And of course, you can get more slow data-storage for less money.

 

[B.J.]

Since this is drifting a bit from external hard drives to hard drives in general, I just wanted to mention that I use a Twinhan 1020a PCI receiver, and I have had significant issues with the Twinhan if I am using a SATA drive in my computer. Basically everything is OK until I start transferring a big file to or from the SATA drive, at which point the Twinhan essentially shuts down and loses lock. As soon as the data transfer is done, everything is OK again. It seems like using an EXTERNAL SATA drive is OK, but when it's connected internally, that is when the problem exists. My problems were with my Windows 2000 computer, so it may not be an issue for other operating systems. I eventually took the SATA drive out of my computer, and put it in an external enclosure.

 

[Tron]

B.J., it sounds like your SATA controller and Twinhan card are sharing IRQs. You might be able to solve that via Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager. The external drives wouldn't have an issue since the drives themselves are SATA, but are connected through a bridge to USB2.

 

[B.J.]

B.J., it sounds like your SATA controller and Twinhan card are sharing IRQs. You might be able to solve that via Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager. ....

Yeah, that was my thought, and I had checked on the IRQs at the time, but didn't see anything likely to cause the issue. Can't do it now, because the drive is no longer in the computer. I've been sticking with the IDE type drives since, but it's getting harder to find the IDE types now as the SATAs seem to be taking over, so I may have to address this again in the future.

 

[Anole]

640gb 2.5" USB, $90:

This looks to be a little 2.5" drive in a small USB enclosure.
Do verify before purchase, if that matters.
Not necessarily the cheapest, compared to some deals above, but are they still available?
Also , if 2.5" is important/useful to you, this may be worth the price.
(they generally operate right off the power from the USB cable)

WDBAAR6400ABK-NESN

More discussion on the same item Amazon.com: Western Digital WD Elements 640 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAR6400ABK-NESN: Electronics@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31bMAyml-mL.@@AMEPARAM@@31bMAyml-mL (for more $$)

 

[Anole]

Hitachi Deskstar 1TB $69.99 Microcenter

Yes, 1000 gigabytes, if you need that. - :up
This is an internal SATA drive.
Here is a discussion to help you decide if it's useful.

See next post for somewhere to stick it. -

 

[Anole]

Thermaltake drive drop-in:

Thermaltake makes three models of a little desktop box you drop a SATA drive into, bare.
A buddy of mine uses them along with surplus drives , as data modules.

$10: The first unit has a USB 2 interface only.
You could hook it to your FTA receiver.

I got one to use on my new Philips DVP5992 DVD player .
It'll take Divx and XviD video files and upconvert them to 720/1080.
(I paid $50, shipped, from Essex)

So, by bringing a drive from my FTA receiver or my computer, and dropping it into the DVD player, I have instant access to 1000's of shows.

$20: The second unit has USB 2, and eSATA, for higher performance transfer with your computer.
You must have an eSATA connector on your computer, but that's an exercise for the student.

$30: Third model has two drive capability.
I guess if you need to often duplicate drives, this would be just the thing.
No use to me.

All are refurbishes. I got mine today, and they look like new.
Each comes with suitable data cables, and a small switching power supply.