300GB hard drive for $160, would you buy it?

Western Digital.

7200RPM

ATA133 interface

8MB built-in cache

I gave 269 for mine :(

Anywhere near a Fry's ?

I didn't give them the ORIGINAL receipt when the rebate had said a copy would be sufficient. :mad:

I just go for the lowest prices and say "sod all" to rebates.

Also lost a $30 rebate from JASC (Paint Shop Pro)...

and that was because LapLink went through Chap 11 and disavowed their creditors - inlcuding rebate holders.

Occasionally I have to get insistent with their reps and a few times had to sic Fry's rebate Dept on the rebate clearinghouse.

But it's very important to follow the instructions to the letter and keep copies.

Definitely a good deal, considering some places sell 200G HDs for over $200.

But I'd check newegg.com first to see if I could find a better price.

For instance: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144391

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144392

Way too many Maxtor HD failures -- great luck w Hitachi Deskstar, WD and Seagate.

And newegg is almost tooooooooo fast w shipping.

Very quiet and very fast.

I still have mine, but my son's went tits up a couple of months ago and I had to get him a new one.

Both died within 1 week of each other exactly 1 month before the warranty would have expired.

device??

I had two fail completely within 1 week of each other.

They used to be top quality, now they are not. I deal with a lot of hardware issues so I see a lot of drives, however, I have a Western in the PC I have at home so you can take a chance on it just have a reliable back up for your stuff.

I've lost data I couldn't have lost to Western Digital.

Editr: lots o ftyposw.

I would have it filled rather quickly, too, I'm afraid.

I'm a downloadaholic. And a fontaholic. And a plugin addict. Photoshop has grown well beyond its initial scope of 200mbs, and is now somewhere in the vicinity of a GB. And that's even without all the plugins I have!

And don't talk about fonts. My goal is 100,000, and I'm at least 1/2 of the way there, if not closer to 3/4 of the way. And no: they're not all installed, and no, they're not all in my fonts directory.

And I will have my new digital camera before too long, and that means massive graphics files.

So yeah--a 300GB drive would be just about right, right now. :D

and the sound of the head read/write is a faint whine - no clunking or grinding like the Maxtor piece of shit next to it

.... you can afford a second to be a backup :) I mean, what is the point of having all that space if you can't back up a copy? You gonna write 300 Gig to DVD or CD?

Others have spoken of various manufacturer's reliability.

I don't think many of today's drives are particularly good. They are made to run a few years and then die.

Someone mentioned Hitachi/Deskstar. When those came out in 2000 or so, they were really popular. They were also junk. I should be getting a $75 check soon as a settlement for a class-action suit brought against IBM over those drives. I had 2, they both died at about the 6 month point.

I've had several WDs go bad too. Basically, back up your data because none of these cheap-ass commodity drives are pillars of reliability. :)