looking for 1.5 or 2 TB WD HDD...

[pianoplayr88key]

Hi all... I'm almost out of HDD space (my current flash card capacity (used in a Canon SX10 IS camera and a Zoom H2 recorder) exceeds my hard drive available space, which tells me it's time to upgrade), and am looking for good deals on hard drives.

I mainly want to stick with Western Digital, as I have been happy with them in the past, and right now am very wary of Seagate. I'd like to get a Black drive, but the largest Black currently available is 1TB. My previous drive purchase that was (and still is) used for main storage (I did get a 1TB drive for backup recently) was a 750GB WD7500AAKS, and I prefer to make at least a 2 to 3 step jump in capacity with the next drive I buy.
Due to some circumstances, I have a ~$240 credit on my CC, so I need to buy something as soon as possible. I was hoping I'd have ordered by the time the CC company usually processes the bill they're going to send me (usually between the 15th and 18th I think) but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

I'm probably wanting to get 2 identical drives - use one as main storage and one as backup. Or, should I just get 1 drive now, and wait a few months till I have accumulated another few hundred GB of data, then buy the backup drive?

The drives I'm currently looking at (both Western Digital Greens) are the 1.5TB WD15EADS and the 2TB WD20EADS. Assuming a quantity of 2, the best deals I have found so far, including tax and shipping, are:
WD20EADS x 2 - Dell.com = $438.98 (NewEgg with FedEx 3-day shipping is $512.79, and at that price I would only be buying one - the Dell deal is still a little over the top too.)
WD15EADS x 2 - NewEgg.com = $300.86 w/FedEx 3-day. I chose FedEx due to problems I've read about re DOAs with UPS and EggSaver shipping.

Does anyone know where I can get a better deal? I would like to be able to get two 2TB drives for less/TB than the 1.5TB noted above, and would like to order in the next couple days. I searched SD and saw Dell had the WD20EADS around $180, but under conditions that I can't meet. The price I mentioned above is based on a $199 base price.

Also, MIRs will NOT be considered, so any deal you suggest needs to be w/o or before MIR. B&M (I'm in San Diego, CA) would be nice, but I've checked a couple local places and their prices, IF they offer the products, range from 25 to 50% higher approximately. (I did get my 750GB drive a couple years or so ago at a B&M though for $139 incl tax.)

[radford]

Hi all... I'm almost out of HDD space (my current flash card capacity (used in a Canon SX10 IS camera and a Zoom H2 recorder) exceeds my hard drive available space, which tells me it's time to upgrade), and am looking for good deals on hard drives.

I mainly want to stick with Western Digital, as I have been happy with them in the past, and right now am very wary of Seagate. I'd like to get a Black drive, but the largest Black currently available is 1TB. My previous drive purchase that was (and still is) used for main storage (I did get a 1TB drive for backup recently) was a 750GB WD7500AAKS, and I prefer to make at least a 2 to 3 step jump in capacity with the next drive I buy.
Due to some circumstances, I have a ~$240 credit on my CC, so I need to buy something as soon as possible. I was hoping I'd have ordered by the time the CC company usually processes the bill they're going to send me (usually between the 15th and 18th I think) but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

I'm probably wanting to get 2 identical drives - use one as main storage and one as backup. Or, should I just get 1 drive now, and wait a few months till I have accumulated another few hundred GB of data, then buy the backup drive?



Wasnt there a Dell deal on the 1.5s WD ? Is that over? It was around 117 for a 1.5.

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=134894&t=1454801&highlight=dell

[pianoplayr88key]

That does look like a better deal than the $129 that NewEgg wants for the same drive... I'd have to check shipping/tax to make sure.
I'd really like to get a good price (preferably same or less $/TB as the 1.5) on the 2TB drive, though. Anyone know where I can get one (without having to use a MIR or be some elite paying member of something) around $165-185, or is $200 the best I can do right now?

[radford]

That does look like a better deal than the $129 that NewEgg wants for the same drive... I'd have to check shipping/tax to make sure.
I'd really like to get a good price (preferably same or less $/TB as the 1.5) on the 2TB drive, though. Anyone know where I can get one (without having to use a MIR or be some elite paying member of something) around $165-185, or is $200 the best I can do right now?

I think so. I think its still a bit early for tons of insane deals for 2 TBs. I just started seeing them whereas the 1-1.5 TB deals are starting to become really common. However things seem to be changing fast so if you are willing to wait for the back to school deals in Aug or Sept and the fall season --- there might be some killer deals.

Frankly on one hand though it always seems like there isnt enough space since it always seems like its running out after you buy yet another huge HD ---- if you use some restraint you really dont need that much space. For instance Im always running out of space but 90% of the space used is junk I got that is so huge in number , I actually dont have the time to organize it and look through it. I end up in a ridiculous situation where I dont even use 90 percent of it and yet Im scared Ill erase something important. However, it would take so much time to organize it , I almost always end up erasing it 90 percent of it.

[pianoplayr88key]

Hehe... that disk space thing.... I'm running a duplicate file finder and so far have gone from about 10GB to 24GB free on one partition.... don't expect a whole lot more, though, but we'll see what happens...
Maybe I can wait till Aug/Sept... depends on how many pics/videos I take with my Canon SX10, and how much audio I record with my Zoom H2, in the meantime... (I currently use 1 16GB and 4 8GB SD cards).

Back when I got my 750GB HDD, it was then the largest size available, was the best $/GB, and the local non-chain B&M had the best deal on it. Any chance of duplicating at least 2 of those 3 within the next month or two (preferably largest size and best $/GB)?

[radford]

Hehe... that disk space thing.... I'm running a duplicate file finder and so far have gone from about 10GB to 24GB free on one partition.... don't expect a whole lot more, though, but we'll see what happens...
Maybe I can wait till Aug/Sept... depends on how many pics/videos I take with my Canon SX10, and how much audio I record with my Zoom H2, in the meantime... (I currently use 1 16GB and 4 8GB SD cards).

Back when I got my 750GB HDD, it was then the largest size available, was the best $/GB, and the local non-chain B&M had the best deal on it. Any chance of duplicating at least 2 of those 3 within the next month or two (preferably largest size and best $/GB)?

Someone posted a Seagate 1.5 deal that was slightly cheaper than the lowest 1.5 deal I mentioned.

Sure, I was whining about how prices dont seem to reflect the fact we are in one of the worst recessions in the last few decades and the fact PC sales have nosedived. There are articles about DVD sales nosediving, ad revenues falling etc. ---- and yet there really havent been a stream of insane deals. In fact a lot of things have been steathily going up -- food containers seem to be steathily getting smaller and oil was rising until about 2 weeks ago and Time Warner tried to push a big increase - tiered rates. They just raised the cable TV cost 5 bucks a mo in my region.

However suddenly theres been a stream of really low LCD TV and lower end LCD monitor prices and a few other items seem to be getting softer like 1-1.5 TB drives. So with back to school coming around and talk of BING cashback gearing up for bigger discounts , you might see some dramatic drops in 2 TB drives. The best deals usually involve a gimmick though - cashback , rebates.

ZZF had the $30 off if you use eBILLME deal for a FANTOM external 1 TB drive with rebate. You could have used the 30 rebate from eBIllme on anything though as long as you paid more than 100 so a 2 TB sale combined with the rebate would have been 30 off as well.

[pianoplayr88key]

Yes, I've noticed that about the LCD monitors... seems like I can get one that'll display true 1080p not much north of $100 now...
Well I've cleaned a few things up and gone up to 30GB free on a partition that only had about 10GB... maybe that'll tide me over for a month or two... (of course maybe not, considering videos taken with my camera are typically about 5GB/hour or so... but then I don't shoot video all the time)
Now to find out what else is eating all my HDD space... (I do have a 28GB unused partition that was going to have Windows 7 RC installed on it, but right now I have W7RC on a VM / virtual drive...)

[xillix]

I'm probably wanting to get 2 identical drives - use one as main storage and one as backup. Or, should I just get 1 drive now, and wait a few months till I have accumulated another few hundred GB of data, then buy the backup drive?
The problem with larger drive is that you are risking more data in one place. 2TB is a huge amount of data, even if it is something as stupid as porn or media files or scans of treasure maps.

If you have a back up source then a second drive is not necessary, but a malfunction would suck. I thought one of my backups was dead today and it scared the hell out of me.

[radford]

The problem with larger drive is that you are risking more data in one place. 2TB is a huge amount of data, even if it is something as stupid as porn or media files or scans of treasure maps.

If you have a back up source then a second drive is not necessary, but a malfunction would suck. I thought one of my backups was dead today and it scared the hell out of me.

Yeah it is a problem and its also a pain to back up too though you could do that with another 2 TB drive. However, you get to the point where you start with small drives and keep adding more small one and end up with 4 small drives to the point you have to start replacing them with the new cheaper larger drives. Then you end up with 4 of those and the pattern repeats it self. I have like 12 drives scattered around due to the fact way back in the rebate days when you could get drives all the time for 20-30 bucks AR everyone would keep adding new ones every 6 mos or so. I just got rid of various 160 giggers and so Im stuck now with several 200, 320 and 500 giggers -- some several yrs old.

[pianoplayr88key]

Yes, the extra drive would be for backup, as I have nothing else to back up onto. (Leo Laporte has advertised Carbonite, but I don't think that would work for me as my upload bandwidth is rather slow - probably 100kb/s at best, if not much slower, so uploading a few TB of data is gonna take a while.)
I remember like 15 or 20 years ago when my parents used to back up our 40MB hard drive onto a tape drive... the tape cost a fraction of what the hard drive cost, AND held the entire drive several times over, IIRC. Sure it took a long time to transfer & access the data, but it was made up for by a much lower $/MB ratio AND enough capacity to hold everything a few times over.
So what's the modern equivalent - something that'll hold several TB (or tens of TB I guess now) at once, and costs a small fraction per TB as a hard drive? (I wouldn't care if it took a while to back up - say, overnight and part of the next day, for example.) Or should I just continue with my plan to get 2 hard drives (which I'm trying to postpone till late August/September in hopes to get some good deals)?

I currently have an 80GB WD800JB, a 250GB WD2500JB, and a 750GB WD7500AAKS in service, as well as a 1TB WD10EADS (that currently is in an external enclosure and not physically connected to the computer) onto which those other drives are backed up. My current plan is to retire the 80GB drive when I get a new one at least 1.5 or 2TB, and if for some reason a 2.5, 3, 3.5, or even 4TB drive is available for a good deal in a couple months (which I think is unlikely) I may even consider retiring the 250. (Basically I would probably retire older drives whose capacity is maybe ~6-8% or less of an individual new drive I get, while probably not having fewer than 2 drives installed at one time, maybe 3.
So... buy now, or wait for back to school?

And, how is 2TB a huge amount of data? That's only enough for 2 hours, 57 minutes, 47 seconds of uncompressed HD video - 1080p, 8 bits/RGB color (24 bits/pixel), 30fps, 48kHz, 24-bit, 6-channel (5 + dedicated bass) audio. What would typical losslessly compressed HD video take? Then, when you start storing IMAX or Super Hi-Vision (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_hi_vision) (quad by quad HD - 7680x4320) combined with high-speed photography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_photography#Video) (let's say several thousand frames per second) and high/wide dynamic range (search wikipedia) - maybe 48-bit for each of red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow... then 2TB starts to look awfully small.
(No, I don't expect to be capturing video of a quality like that anytime soon, but maybe someday, and when/if that time DOES come, I'll want to be able to store at least several weeks/months worth of continuous footage on one physical drive... maybe around 2020?)
To be a little more down to earth, I currently capture video with a Canon SX10 IS - 640x480, 30fps, H.264 format. I wanted to get an SX1 (1920x1080), but it wasn't available in the USA at that time, the 4GB filesize limit would look very small when there were times I would want to record a church service all the way through in its entirety in one take without gaps, for example, AND I was a bit wary of the rolling shutter effect I had seen in reviews of other CMOS-based cameras, although I DO like the idea of being able to zoom from about 28mm to 1000mm equivalent focal length while shooting full HD without much if any loss of image quality (28-560mm optical, rest was digital zoom, lossless due to much higher resolution (for stills) of CMOS). If I DID have an SX1, though, my hard drive (with the videos I'd be shooting) would be filling up MUCH faster.

[pianoplayr88key]

So should I keep my eyes out on the SD front page for deals on 2TB hard drives in the next month or two, or search the forums? Also if I search, how would I do it so I get the proper results, and not necessarily unrelated ones? For example if I search for a WD 1.5TB black drive and it doesn't exist, it'll say no results; also if I search for a WD 2TB green drive, it won't link me to a Seagate 1.5TB drive, or if the WD is in the same thread with Seagate in the title, it'll link me directly to the post where the WD is mentioned. Also is there maybe email notification I could set up?

[radford]

So should I keep my eyes out on the SD front page for deals on 2TB hard drives in the next month or two, or search the forums? Also if I search, how would I do it so I get the proper results, and not necessarily unrelated ones? For example if I search for a WD 1.5TB black drive and it doesn't exist, it'll say no results; also if I search for a WD 2TB green drive, it won't link me to a Seagate 1.5TB drive, or if the WD is in the same thread with Seagate in the title, it'll link me directly to the post where the WD is mentioned. Also is there maybe email notification I could set up?

I had to actually look this up to refresh my memory because I never use these tools. If you look under TOOLS theres a DEAL Alerts option.

Theres also a FAQ
http://forums.slickdeals.net/faq.php?faq=sd_faq_item

Anytime I want to find something I just do a general term search like "hard disk" or "Hard drive" and various things come up. In fact I often search via Google because when a deal comes up if its hard to find on SD the same deal tends to pop up over multiple deal sites since they are all in competition to get the same deals listed.

Its like the efficient market theory for stocks. Publicly available news gets spread widely and quickly , almost instantaneously which is why they argue its pretty much useless to try to make consistent profits trading stocks though theres a tiny few like Buffet who have made a ton of money.

Anyway --- sure the odds seem good with the current softening of prices and talk about Back to school sales coming up, that you might find a good deal. Nothing is guaranteed though. One of the strategies people used to always follow was wait for a holiday, since the chains and big online retailers almost always had insane rebate deals years ago. The last few years --- NADA.
I dont know how many holidays I waited for to see if some CDRs, DVDRs or other items would be on sale and didnt find anything much on sale.

Similarly , Ive sat through BTSchool seasons the last few years and didnt find any great deals and especially Xmas. In fact sales in general have been pretty dismal since 2005 when they started phasing out the rebates which was the primary way of getting free or close to free stuff.
The most disappointing season tends to be Xmas. They often have fake sales then , its hard to find any real insane sales since everyone is going to buy anyway. BTS and October/BF have become increasingly non-events too but they tend to have SOME real sales. All the real deals now tend to be totally random things that pop like that that Tmobile huge rebate with Bing cash back "mistake" that made the phone free a few days ago so you often have to be really quick.

[pianoplayr88key]

Hi all.... I was just at my local Fry's about 20-30 minutes ago, and they had the retail boxed version of the 2TB WD Green drive for $229.99 and the Seagate 5900rpm retail for $209.99 - are either of those good? Keep in mind that I'm in CA and would have to pay sales tax to NewEgg and Dell.
Also listed in their barebones OEM section was a WD10EAVS which they claimed was a 7200rpm Green drive - I think it was $90 or $100, but I'm not sure. If that's not a typo, is there possibly a 2TB version coming? Or a 1.5 or 2TB black drive?
They didn't have the OEM version of the 2TB WD or any 1.5TB WDs that I could see.

Also I've read about reliability problems with some drives (mostly Seagate, but WD isn't totally immune) purchased online. Based on some NewEgg reviews, I'm led to believe it's poor packaging for shipping. Would I not have that problem if I bought one locally?

Also the Dell deal I had seen in another thread appears to be off - it's now $299, and the coupon code doesn't work. So who's going to beat that former deal now?
The WD20EADS is now $219.99 @ NewEgg. Price there versus at Fry's appears to be within less than $1 of each other, considering I wouldn't be using the free shipping - would use FedEx due to recommendations from some other reviewers on other drives, if I bought it at NewEgg.
Fry's also has a 7200rpm Seagate 2TB online for $199.99 which should also be available for in-store pickup (but I think the in-store price, unless it was a different drive, was a little higher. Should that be ok, considering I wouldn't have the shipping problems that are complained about by some egg reviewers? Or should I stick with WD?

[radford]

Hi all.... I was just at my local Fry's about 20-30 minutes ago, and they had the retail boxed version of the 2TB WD Green drive for $229.99 and the Seagate 5900rpm retail for $209.99 - are either of those good? Keep in mind that I'm in CA and would have to pay sales tax to NewEgg and Dell.
Also listed in their barebones OEM section was a WD10EAVS which they claimed was a 7200rpm Green drive - I think it was $90 or $100, but I'm not sure. If that's not a typo, is there possibly a 2TB version coming? Or a 1.5 or 2TB black drive?
They didn't have the OEM version of the 2TB WD or any 1.5TB WDs that I could see.

Also I've read about reliability problems with some drives (mostly Seagate, but WD isn't totally immune) purchased online. Based on some NewEgg reviews, I'm led to believe it's poor packaging for shipping. Would I not have that problem if I bought one locally?

Also the Dell deal I had seen in another thread appears to be off - it's now $299, and the coupon code doesn't work. So who's going to beat that former deal now?
The WD20EADS is now $219.99 @ NewEgg. Price there versus at Fry's appears to be within less than $1 of each other, considering I wouldn't be using the free shipping - would use FedEx due to recommendations from some other reviewers on other drives, if I bought it at NewEgg.
Fry's also has a 7200rpm Seagate 2TB online for $199.99 which should also be available for in-store pickup (but I think the in-store price, unless it was a different drive, was a little higher. Should that be ok, considering I wouldn't have the shipping problems that are complained about by some egg reviewers? Or should I stick with WD?

Isnt there a 2 1.5 samsung deal in hotdeals forum? I think they are 5400 rpm though.

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=134894&t=1468509

Seagate supposedly had a rash of bad drives related to their firmware it wasnt just shipping.
They used to be hyped as one of the better drives but now their rep got slaughtered after a few models they had seemed to have persistent problems. Hard to say if they are OK or not. Ever since the failures started cropping up there have been other owners who say their Seagates are OK so you always see that --- therefore its hard to say if the problem is over or not. I think they have a new series out now so maybe those are OK.

All the makes have had some bashers but people seem to prefer WD at the moment. I did see at one retail sites -- about 3 reviews in a row claiming a WD had failed with one of their drives recently. I dont know if thats indicative of anything or just a coincidence or even some sleazeballs trying to make WD look bad.

Interestingly enough --- in the US there are tons of Samsung boosters so you tend to see good things about the drives but someone linked to a Euro hardware forum in regards to Seagates failures and I noticed they was a lot of bashing of Samsung drives and Seagates -- they didnt like both of the makes. However like i said I havent seen any wave of bashing Samsung drives in the US.

Hitachi --- some people still bash them because they used to be IBMs. Back then they were even more hyped than Seagate. You hinted that IBM HDs werent the best and people would bash you. Then they had a rash of failures and their rep was trashed. That was eons ago though and since Hitachi bought them, I havent seen any bad things about the HDs.