Maxtor 80 GB Hard Drive ~$228 (PM/Coupon)

[lizardboy]

Yes this drive is only 5400 RPM, but it is perfect for anyone looking to hack their ReplayTV or Tivo.

staples has the Maxtor 80GB HD for $299.98 (sku #443232)

upgrade planet has the same drive for $237.00, but you have to figure in the overnight shipping to your address, for the me total delivered price was $257.69

If it was me, I would place the order online at staples.com using the $40 off $200 coupon, then wait a few hours and call for the price adjustment. This is what I did, and staples credited $44.40 back to my credit card.

Or you can call staples directly (800-3STAPLES) and have them do the price match before you place the order...you just never know if they will take the coupon. If you place the order online and they then refuse to do the price adjustment you can always cancel your order.

Don't forget to go through dash to save another 4%

Good luck.

EDIT - if you have not taken advantage of the maxtor $50 rebate on the ata 100 controller card you can knock off another $15 on this...if you look around you should be able to find the card for $35...maxtor has a $50 MIR when you buy a HD and the card.

 

[XzeroR3]

I like how you describe the ways to get the drive.

 

[callgirl]

>>>If you place the order online and they then refuse to do the price adjustment you can always cancel your order.
<<<

Are you SURE about that?...about a month ago, on a Saturday at 1:00AM, I placed a Canon printer order at Staples.com...2 hours later, after reading a horrible review, I called staples' 800 number (this was 3AM on a weekend), and asked to cancel the order. I was told there was no way to cancel it, even though it obviously had not shipped out. I had to accept delivery then take the printer back to a local store to avoid shipping charges on the return.

 

[lizardboy]

In the past 6 months I have returned two items...but both times I did not decide to cancel the order until a few days after I placed it. Both times the CSR said that after a day or two the order goes to the wharehouse and could not be cancelled. Both times I just took the item back to my local staples and received a full credit. They actually gave me extra money by calculating the tax incorrectly

 

[callgirl]

Hehe...they gave me $30.00 extra dollars on that printer by not calculating the $30.00 coupon I used on the purchase - oops :Q

 

[heinekenguy]

i dunno...goin' with a maxtor drive especially when it's 80gigs...price is sweet, i agree there, but maxtor...hm...

 

[DerProfi]

Hmmm...it looks like Dash must not work with Staples any longer. Bummer.

 

[callgirl]

Nope...no Dash. The only rewards program that I have listed for Staples is Milesource (yuck).

 

[hkssupra69]

what's wrong with maxtor? they have awesome drives. I've bought 3 maxtor drives in the past and I've never been disappointed yet.

 

[poizon]

80 GB Maxtor EIDE 5400 rpm Hard Drive for $215

Think Staples would pricematch with this?

 

[Linh]

sweet price

 

[Cynicism]

Definitely not to thread crap, but keep a eye on the FS/FT forums, got my 80 gig retail shipped a few months ago for $230

 

[Scarpozzi]

Maxtor has been much better lately... I remember about 3-5 years ago when their drives weren't all that great, but I think they've really jumped in quality. I have two 30 gig drives. One's a Maxtor and the other is a Quantum. Compared to the Quantum, I'd always go Maxtor and Western Digital(my fav). But always remember, the main thing you want from a drive is speed and reliablility. Aside from bulk manufacturing defects, most drives are going to be pretty good these days. Good post for a good drive! I'm going to try this tomorrow!

 

[lizardboy]

I certainly didn't expect this thread to get bumped back up.

I was looking for an 80 gig drive to add to my ReplayTV...this was the best price i could come up with last month. So far the drive is working great...just finished watching Survivor. If anyone is on the fence for a ReplayTV or a Tivo I highly reccomend the ReplayTV...the upgrade hack is a snap and you will not believe the way it changes how you watch TV. This site has been mentioned many times, but avs forum is a great resource for both ReplayTV &amp; Tivo. The best thing ReplayTV has that Tivo does not is a skip forward button. You can skip forward between 30 seconds &amp; 2-3 minutes very easily - it takes about 5 seconds to blow thru the commercials.

(talk about thread jacking - but it's my thread so i should be allowed to jack it )

 

[DerProfi]

Thanks to poizon for pointing to this place. GPS Computer Services in Ohio has this drive for $215. Their shipping seems pretty reasonable. It was $10 shipped UPS to Virginia.

For me, this works out to a better deal than UpgradePlanet's price of $227 + shipping because they're in Virginia and would charge me sales tax.

I don't see why Staples is PMing these at all--what they sell for $299 is the retail boxed version, whereas AFAIK these other places are selling the OEM bare drive.

I second lizardboy's comments about ReplayTV. It ROCKS! I'm looking to do the same 80GB upgrade in mine. Right now I've got a 7200RPM 40GB Maxtor in one of mine and it's loud as hell...

 

[poizon]

Ahh, yeah ... I didn't realize that GPS has the OEM drive. Well, it still seems a little better than going through all the trouble of PM/Coupon, plus it's a few $$$ cheaper. Oh well.

 

[DerProfi]

Yeah, I think the GPS deal is the way to go. I've been making bids (and losing) on 80GB bare drives on *bay for about a week--they generally end up going for $215-235 + $11 or more for shipping, so I'm going to stop trying my luck at auctions and just buy one for $225 shipped. Thanks for pointing out the deal poizon.

 

[lizardboy]

DerProfi,

I did the same thing on egay, kept losing 80GB bids at about $225. Keep in mind if you (or anyone) goes with a drive for replaytv you want a 5400 RPM drive...will build up much less heat than a 7200 RPM drive...there are no fans in the unit so heat is a major concern. Of course many people have put in fans, but for most hackers it seems like a 5400 RPM 80 GB drive is within the heat tolerances as long as you don't stack something on top of the unit.

 

[drac747]

Why does my Dash list show Staples (3%) ??

I have had a few people tell me Dash doesn't do staples anymore .. but there it is.

 

[DerProfi]

lizardboy, I'm running a single 7200rpm drive in my ReplayTV without a problem, although I wouldn't try two of them without adding a fan. What really bothers me is the noise it makes, and I'm hoping the 80GB drive will be much, much quieter.

PS, that protein folding thing looks cool &amp; slightly more useful than searching for extraterrestrials or hacking crypto

 

[lizardboy]

derprofi,

apologies if you already know this...but there are 3 different 'acoustic managemnet' settings you can set your hard drive too...basically comes down to noise vs. performance...PM or post here if you have any questions and I can point you in the right direction to get more info on this

as for folding@home...from what little i know about genetics once they are able to get all of the proteins in the human body mapped out they will be able to design drugs that work with the proteins - revolutionary change...we'd love to have you join the folding team ...i leave mine running all the time...it only uses un-used clock cycles...so you should not notice any performance decrease

 

[DerProfi]

Unfortunately my model Maxtor doesn't support the AMSET program, so it has 2 settings: ON=noisy and OFF=quiet

 

[GReddyLude]

How much faster is a 7200 RPM HD compared to a 5400 one? That is, how noticable is the difference in speed?

Oh, one more question: how many of you use 80+ gigs of HD space? I have a 25gb drive and I have about 18.5 gigs free. Most of my space is occupied by some 1000 or so MP3s.

 

[JonathanTheRed]

GReddy, I routinely use all of my 87GB and wish I had more.

Probably the only reason someone would need that quantity of space for his personal computer (as opposed to an enterprise server) is if he does digital video capture and editing. DV takes up around about 18GB/hour. I'm in the process of converting all my old analog VHS tapes to VideoCD, and I would be much happier with more disk space... my capture volume consists of spanned 40GB and 17GB drives, which is enough for me to grab just over 3 hours at a time, before I have to compress to MPEG and edit. I'd really prefer it if my capture volume were big enough to snag an entire 6-hour tape at once. I'm seriously considering taking advantage of this 80GB deal... then I could put the 80GB drive in my personal video recorder, and take the Quantum Fireball AS 40GB drive from the recorder and put it in my computer. I need another ATA-100 controller anyway.

 

[DerProfi]

GReddyLude,

Here at home I've got 110GB in my server, 80GB in my primary workstation, 12GB in my laptop, 10GB in another workstation, 8GB in my MAME machine, and probably 10 or so gigs spread across several drives of smaller sizes. All are probably 80-90% full. Add 40GB in a ReplayTV and 30GB in a Panasonic Showstopper and that's 300GB. I hate to say it, but I could do with 100 to 200 gigs more.

What sucks is when you get up into that amount of space, full backups become just about impossible. I mean, assuming I used DLTs I'd spend $70 for a tape that holds 70GB compressed. However, most of my stuff is compressed anyway like ZIP files, MP3s and videos, so I'd probably be lucky to squeeze 40GB on a DLT-IV tape which means 6-7 tapes for a full backup. For the cost of those tapes I could almost go and buy two 80GB hard drives

It's funny to realize that within a year we'll probably be at a point where it's cheaper to back up to magnetic disk than to magnetic tape.

derprofi