Is this external hard drive worth buying? - Update

It's a good drive, but far from cheap. For a retail brand name external HD like this, it's only considered decently priced if the cost is around 50 cents per gigabyte. If you buy an internal HD and a seperate external HD enclosure, that'll be even cheaper.
 
Yeah, there was a whole thread about making external HDDs. It's not always that much cheaper... that AMS Venus enclousure is pretty much the best and that same (or similar) Seagate HDD runs about $80: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148021. So that's $80 + $37 + $11 shipping ends up at $128.XX so you save a couple of bucks after tax from that BB External.:lol:

$130 isn't bad for 160GB but for $20 more, you could get a 300GB Seagate HDD from Fry's ($200 - $50 MIR) this week. Or if you do want to make your own, shop around for the external HDD... use Pricewatch to find some better deals. It's possible but takes some work finding the enclousure and an HDD at a good price (after that it's rather simple).
 
Thanks for the advice, I thought about going enclosure and internal, but I want something like now. Best Buy only had 1 enclosure available and it was $70. Add the $50 80GB Western Digital internal hard drive on sale this week and thats $120 for 80gigs. I think I'll go with the external Seagate 160GB. Too bad I have no Fry's near me, $150 for 300 GB is insane!
 
[quote name='Vinny']Yeah, there was a whole thread about making external HDDs. It's not always that much cheaper... that AMS Venus enclousure is pretty much the best and that same (or similar) Seagate HDD runs about $80: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148021. So that's $80 + $37 + $11 shipping ends up at $128.XX so you save a couple of bucks after tax from that BB External.:lol:
[/QUOTE]

One rule of thumb is you never buy HDs online, since they hardly ever go on sale. When HDs go on sale in B&M stores, between 25 cents to 30 cents per gigabyte is a good buy. Circuit City has a Western Digital 160GB for $50 AR this week. If you shove it into a $40 enclosure, you save $40. And $40 enclosure is pretty expensive and unnecessary. I have 3 of these with three 160GB HDs, each setup ran me about $75 each at the time I bought them (during a few $40 for 160GB deals). Nothing beats buying them seperately if you know how and where to look. If you just look at newegg, that's not going to get you anywhere near as cheap as you can.

But of course, if the OP needs it instantly, $130 for a 160GB is the way to go.
 
Ok, new question. I bought the Seagate 160GB from Best Buy today. It works fine, but the file system is FAT32 and my computer's hard drive is NTFS. Should I format the Seagate hard drive to NTFS? I want to know this before I move files over to it.

Edit - So I just checked out the Best Buy ad for tomorrow and this same hard drive is on sale for $40 less! What the hell?! Does Best Buy do price adjustments?
 
[quote name='tcrash247']Ok, new question. I bought the Seagate 160GB from Best Buy today. It works fine, but the file system is FAT32 and my computer's hard drive is NTFS. Should I format the Seagate hard drive to NTFS? I want to know this before I move files over to it.

Edit - So I just checked out the Best Buy ad for tomorrow and this same hard drive is on sale for $40 less! What the hell?! Does Best Buy do price adjustments?[/QUOTE]


lol... this is why you really shouldn't buy computer parts in a hurry, unless it's really urgent. But luckily, yes Best Buy does price match items bought within the last 30 days. At $90 for the drive (with rebate I suppose), it's getting close to being a pretty good deal. And yes you should reformat the drive before you use it to NTFS. The only draw back to that is if you were to hook it up to an older OS like Win98 then it will not be readable. But you'll save yourself some HD space as it fills up with lots of files.
 
[quote name='SOSTrooper']One rule of thumb is you never buy HDs online, since they hardly ever go on sale. When HDs go on sale in B&M stores, between 25 cents to 30 cents per gigabyte is a good buy. Circuit City has a Western Digital 160GB for $50 AR this week. If you shove it into a $40 enclosure, you save $40. And $40 enclosure is pretty expensive and unnecessary. I have 3 of these with three 160GB HDs, each setup ran me about $75 each at the time I bought them (during a few $40 for 160GB deals). Nothing beats buying them seperately if you know how and where to look. If you just look at newegg, that's not going to get you anywhere near as cheap as you can.

But of course, if the OP needs it instantly, $130 for a 160GB is the way to go.[/QUOTE]

I see... that is true, Fry's has this nice internal 250GB HDD for $70 (120 - $50 rebate) but it's Ultra DMA/100... which I've never heard of. (Sorry about bringing up Fry's again, but I've never been able to enjoy their prices before.)
 
[quote name='SOSTrooper']lol... this is why you really shouldn't buy computer parts in a hurry, unless it's really urgent. But luckily, yes Best Buy does price match items bought within the last 30 days. At $90 for the drive (with rebate I suppose), it's getting close to being a pretty good deal. And yes you should reformat the drive before you use it to NTFS. The only draw back to that is if you were to hook it up to an older OS like Win98 then it will not be readable. But you'll save yourself some HD space as it fills up with lots of files.[/QUOTE]

Cool, I take a trip to Best Buy tomorrow with my reciept. And I think its instant savings, not a MIR. And thanks for telling me to reformat it. I will probably never use W98 so thats no problem there.
 
[quote name='Vinny']I see... that is true, Fry's has this nice internal 250GB HDD for $70 (120 - $50 rebate) but it's Ultra DMA/100... which I've never heard of. (Sorry about bringing up Fry's again, but I've never been able to enjoy their prices before.)[/QUOTE]


Fry's sometimes got really good prices on HDs, internal and external. I feel sorry for people who don't have one around them. Ultra DMA 100 is same as ATA100, which is just a tad slower in burst rate/transfer rate than ATA133. In real world, there is no difference in performance that you can clearly tell, only in benchmarks where you can see some slightly improved numbers.
 
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