Is this a good deal?

[aimeeandbeatles]

At the local Staples, I discovered this:

Western Digital 500GB CAVIAR SE EIDE Internal Hard Drive
# 500GB of capacity allows for storage of approximately 37.5 hours of uncompressed DV digital video, the equivalent of 106 4.7GB DVD video discs or up to 125,000 MP3 files
# Device Type Hard drive - internal
# The large 8MB data buffer helps speed data access on the drive, delivering top-notch real-world performance
# The drive is built around the PATA interface, which allows for bus transfer rates of up to 100MB/sec, ensuring that data is accessed with as much speed as possible
# Seek Time 8.9 ms (average) / 21 ms (max)
# Track-to-Track Seek Time 2 ms
# Average Latency 4.2 ms
# The drive features a rotation speed of 7200 rpm, spinning more quickly than other hard drives to give faster access to data
# Dimensions: 4"(W) x 1"(H) x 5.8"(D)
# Weight: 1.3 lbs.
$149.99 Each

Since it's in-store, there's no shipping costs. Is it a good deal or not? (It's about $0.30 per gigabyte.)

Thanks.

 

[Cutlass]

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKB 500GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM

* Cache: 16MB

Your Price:$72.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136111

 

[ainwood]

Western digital cavier are pretty good drive, BTW. The info reads like a bit of a misleading sales pitch: 7200 rpm isn't that much faster than other drives: WDs own raptors are 10,000 rpm.

 

[Cutlass]

Actually not as bad as it first looks. I'd forgotten how far the Canadian dollar exchange rate had changed since last year.

C$149.99 = US$119.2289

You'd still save money with shipping.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yeah, well at least there's no shipping costs. LOL.

Also, it's very difficult for us to order online -- newegg doesn't take money orders.

 

[Cutlass]

Interesting. By logging into Newegg Canada it says the price is $90.99

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136111


I remember you have problems ordering online. I don't know how to advise you to overcome that. But the price differential is great enough you should really search for a way.

 

[GoodGame]

Western digital cavier are pretty good drive, BTW. The info reads like a bit of a misleading sales pitch: 7200 rpm isn't that much faster than other drives: WDs own raptors are 10,000 rpm.

Yeah, 7200rpm is standard for drives. The only ones slower do so for stability/energy conservation (e.g. the 'green' drives and the drives for notebook computers)

An 8mb cache is ok, but some drives double that.

And you almost always get a better price buying OEM through the mail, though you need to provide your own *inexpensive* cables and might rarely have to return a bad item.

 

[Zelig]

Newegg Canada tends not to have the best prices in Canada.

DirectCanada has it for $68.88, shipping is $10:
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=25350DR9550&vpn=WD5000AAKS&manufacture=Western Digital WD

Staples will pricematch, you just have to hassle at them for a while, and get the right manager.

Print off their policy before you go in: http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Static/static_pages.asp?pagename=help_policy_pricematch

500GB drives tend to not be a great price per GB anymore, if you move up in size, you can get drives for under $0.10/GB.

Edit: I don't know how you manage to find such deals, even the Staples website lists 500GB drives for $100 and 1TB drives for $150.

 

[Till]

Do you really want to buy a PATA drive? The standard has been deprecated since 2003...

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Do you really want to buy a PATA drive? The standard has been deprecated since 2003...

Are you saying this from the speed standpoint or the 'new motherboards only have one IDE connector nowadays' standpoint?
Most mechanical HDD"s would have trouble saturating the 133MB/s bandwidth of a PATA hdd.
The only good reason to get a PATA drive though is if it was significantly cheaper than a SATA one or you do not have SATA.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I have an IDE motherboard. I know this because on the BIOS startup screen thingy, it mentions a bunch of IDE things.

I don't know if you can get the SATA to IDE converter/dongle thingy, is there evn such a thing? And in general, how reliable are they?

 

[Zelig]

Every motherboard still has an IDE connector, but similarly, almost every motherboard since about 2003 has sata connectors as well.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I never noticed anything about SATA connectors. Just IDE ones.

I'm not even sure of the difference other than SATA is newer.

 

[Turner]

SATA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

PATA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Advanced_Technology_Attachment

Basically SATA is faster, much faster, and the newer standard. As I recall, you have a fairly older computer, so you probably don't have a SATA connector.

 

[Zelig]

I never noticed anything about SATA connectors. Just IDE ones.

I'm not even sure of the difference other than SATA is newer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sata

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Everyone I know who had a hard drive made by Western Digital had it die after a few months. I had an external Western Digital drive and that died after a year.

 

[GoodGame]

Annecdotally, WD and Seagate are the top hardrive makers, but I have probably had one turkey from each. If loosing a sub-$100 hard-drive in under a year is a big deal for you, go with an 'enterprise' class hard-drive.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

I have an IDE motherboard. I know this because on the BIOS startup screen thingy, it mentions a bunch of IDE things.

I don't know if you can get the SATA to IDE converter/dongle thingy, is there evn such a thing? And in general, how reliable are they?

In that case my motherboard would be IDE-only as well, even though it has 6 SATA ports and only one IDE port. To see what ports you have, best thing to do is to open up the case and look.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Thanks everyone.

I'll check the IDE/SATA thing when I get a chance to...

Googling my computer brand says that the 2007 version has SATA controllers, but mine is from 2006. I also found a few sites in French, and I read somewhere Axess Prosys is a small company from Montreal or something.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

You wanna figure out what motherboard you have. Something like CPU-z should tell you what your chipset is ( Id have to check on this to be sure ) or you can use Everest Home which should tell you the motherboard.