need best deal for 500GB external firewire/USB harddrive

R

RetroDeLee

CAG Veteran
What's the best price out there (I've been eyeing the Mybooks)
Would like external... firewire possibly... at leats a 2.0 USB

500GB at least... (I know that the my books say they are 500GB... yet they are only 465. Not sure if I like that all that well).
 
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If a harddrive says its storage capacity is 30gb, 50gb, 100gb, or 500 gb. They never really are, they are short a few gigs. Don't know why, but thats the way it is.

Theres a 500 gb external in this weeks best buy ad, its an alright price, alot cheaper than when it first came out or you can dish out more money for the premium one which has blue leds instead of green ones, has a indicator (the 3 rings) of how much space is stored, and can support firewire for faster tranfers than usb 2.0
 
HDs usually only retain 93% of their advertised space. Sucks, I know, but it's just something you have to live with.

In case you are interested, ZipZoomFly has the 500GB MyBook for $169.50 shipped free.
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101258-15&prodlist=pricegrabber

If you are feeling adventurous (and you have a lot of time on your hands), you can try what I did to get it for $148.xx.

I had a $30 off of $150 or more purchase from Staples (you can find them on eBay for like $1). I called them, ended up with a very nice lady who sounded like she was new. I asked her if she could PM to ZZF and after 15 minutes, she said, "I guess I can since I don't see anywhere that I can't". She overrode the system to match the price, then, after another 15 minutes, she got her manager to override the system to apply the $30 coupon. Then she had to add tax and shipping.:)
 
[quote name='ZerotypeX']If a harddrive says its storage capacity is 30gb, 50gb, 100gb, or 500 gb. They never really are, they are short a few gigs. Don't know why, but thats the way it is.[/quote]
The reason it appears as though you are "short a few gigs" is because of confusion in the term Gigabyte. The packaging on a hard disk might advertise the Hard Disk as having a capacity of 500GBs by which they mean that each Gigabyte is made up of 1,000,000,000 bytes. However, when you hook the drive up to your computer, it will display only ~465 Gigabytes. This is because the computer determines that each Gigabyte is made up of 1,073,741,824 bytes (or 2 to the 30th power). So basically the computer is taking the 500,000,000,000 bytes and dividing it by 1,073,741,824. So you really haven't been short changed any space, although the way Hard Disk manufacturers advertise it may look like it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte#Definition

The wikipedia article may explain it better than I did.
 
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