Hitachi 1TB HDD - $200

Maddie said:
I wonder on how the enclosure will impact the performance? Heat sensor that slows the dirve down? You got me, as I was going to buy one of these, and NOW I see lackluster results from peoples reviews.

Someone, post the HDTach readings on this drive!!!
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Possibly the enclosure's power management scheme. If the drive is spinning down too soon then it's going to have to spin back up before it can transfer data. Not to mention the USB transfer rate is going to suck ass at 20-30MBps at best.
 
I pulled the drive out of the enclosure last night and put it in one of my Supermicro 5x3 hot swap bays connected to an Areca 1231ML RAID card. I just created a pass thru for that non-raid drive. I copied 400gb to the drive and was seeing 69-91MB/Sec in Vista X64 for writes. Drive runs only a degree or two warmer than my eight 750gb Western Digital drives. The external enclosure comes apart easily. Performance in the enclosure was poor, but I bought it to run internally anyhow.
 
It mentions 1 year warranty on the BB site: Is that one year through Hitachi, I assume? To RMA the drive, do you have to give them a code off the external enclosure itself, or do they need the serial number off the drive, and handle it like an internal drive?
 
The store in Rochester, MN was out of stock, but the sales rep gave me the $199 price and will ship 1 out from the warehouse. With the 10%, I ended up at $192 out the door!!! Good God, for $.19/gb, you can build a huge raid array for cheap.....
 
Went to the local BB at lunch. Online inventory showed Out-of-stock.

They had 2 on the shelf. Bought 1. The cashier accepted the 10% coupon as well. Out the door at $192.

Great Deal!

Moral of the Story: DON'T TRUST THE ONLINE INVENTORY
 
I just bought 2 of these separately with 10% off each for a total of $389.68 otd.

The online inventory indicates that there are zero in stock, but when I left there were still 3 of these HD's on the shelf.

This was from the BB in Hurst, TX (next to Northeast Mall) for anyone in the area who's interested. You can call ahead and have them hold one of the drives for you too (which I did).

Thanks to the OP for this deal! I saved $57.37 total by purchasing in store with the coupons over purchasing online.
 
Artificiary said:
I just bought 2 of these separately with 10% off each for a total of $389.68 otd.

The online inventory indicates that there are zero in stock, but when I left there were still 3 of these HD's on the shelf.

This was from the BB in Hurst, TX (next to Northeast Mall) for anyone in the area who's interested. You can call ahead and have them hold one of the drives for you too (which I did).

Thanks to the OP for this deal! I saved $57.37 total by purchasing in store with the coupons over purchasing online.
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If you have the time and gas, go back to save $80 instead / get $30~ back with the coupon I posted above.
 
gramarye said:
If you have the time and gas, go back to save $80 instead / get $30~ back with the coupon I posted above.
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I actually tried that coupon first. Unfortunately, when I asked the customer service rep if they would honor the $40 off $199 CC coupon she called the manager over who said they would not. :(

Maybe I can take the receipts to another local BB and see if they'll do the price match. If so, that would make this a smokin hot deal. I'll give it a shot and let you know how it turns out.
 
The Red said:
$40 CC coupon link broken
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I was able to get the CC coupon by either typing in the link manually or when you click the link just remove the "%5D" from the end of the address after the error page loads and try again.

However, I called 2 of my nearest BB's to see if they'd honor the CC coupon and both said they would not so it's a big YMMV. Congrats to anyone else who gets this deal with the CC coupon.
 
I purchased one of these at my local BB for $190 after tax w/the 10% off coupon.

So far the enclosure doesn't seem that bad. Obviously it's not that fast (usb2.0), but i don't see any of the issues people posted about.

I'm probably going to take it out of the enclosure tonight and swap a 500gb into the enclosure.

GREAT deal so far.
 
I know this question can be pretty out-of-the-ordinary, but I was wondering if it'd be safe to use this drive with a SATA to IDE bridge? Strange as this is a downgrade, my friend is wanting to put this SATA drive in her IDE external enclosure, and I'm not quite sure if I should recommend her doing this or not.

It looks something like this:
http://www.addonics.com/products/io/images/adsaide_enlarge.gif

I called the drive company, they said it should be fine as long as it fits, your thoughts?
 
Well, those coupons got my ass in trouble at my Best Buy store. They acted like a was a jail bird trying to use these. That is bullshit. They told me I should leave the store. That is BS.

I need to wait until they are back in stock and will make my order. What a pain in the arse. All of this, just to store more PORN.
 
gramarye said:
I called the drive company, they said it should be fine as long as it fits, your thoughts?
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Most enclosures are spaced exactly for the size of the drive they contain. Putting the SATA>IDE board in there will probably make it too large for the case.
 
This is really 2 drives in 1 case. That's why it doesn't cost as much as you'd expect. ;)
 
I've used the BB coupons two days in a row. I bought the 1TB drive yesterday, and today I bought the 200gb Hitachi External, 2.5". I got one of those for $116.99 for a 200gb 7200rpm SATA laptop drive. Installed in my Mac Mini 1.83ghz Core 2 Duo, and upgraded to a DVD+RW, with 2gb RAM at the same time. Point is, the BB coupons work. Getting greedy with other coupons, may not. I was good with these deals, and having 10% on top made it really nice.
 
The lady who scanned my order gave me 10% off of everything, not just the drive ( I bought orange box to pricematch on friday).

On another note the drive gets very hot when left in the enclosure. I took it out right after formatting it and it was too hot to hold for prolonged periods. It's hitting 56 C right now while undergoing error testing. :(
 
Sorry to hear about the others not being able to get the $40 off. I guess it was a pretty big YMMV after all. As for the greedy part, I think (in my honest opinion) it's only considered greedy when people make a scene and wouldn't be able to accept not getting the deal they wanted. For me, it was more like, "hi, I was just wondering if this qualifies for a price-match, if not, it's okay, I totally understand, I appreciate your time." But definitely can't complain for the 10%.

DryFire, you can buy an item now, and pricematch it on Friday if the item is in the leaked ad? If that's possible, that sounds like a clever idea...

So has anyone managed to take the drive out w/o voiding warranty, or is it definitely impossible?
 
From what I was reading earlier it seems you can. If I can't it's not the end of the world, the extra 10% made it cheaper than buying it online.

On a side note my drive was manufactured April 2007, so not much in the way of warranty left on it.

As for the stickers, the FCC one (the shorter one) was very easy to pry off cleanly. The other one will show Void if you peel it off but I've been able to stick it back down in a way that it's hard to tell it was taken off--as I've only taken part of it off (some white-out tape would also help). The guide linked to earlier says a blow dryer will do the trick.

I thought I remembered seeing someone post saying the internal drive has a 1.5 year warranty, but I'm too sleepy to find it.
 
gramarye said:
Sorry to hear about the others not being able to get the $40 off. I guess it was a pretty big YMMV after all. As for the greedy part, I think (in my honest opinion) it's only considered greedy when people make a scene and wouldn't be able to accept not getting the deal they wanted. For me, it was more like, "hi, I was just wondering if this qualifies for a price-match, if not, it's okay, I totally understand, I appreciate your time." But definitely can't complain for the 10%.

DryFire, you can buy an item now, and pricematch it on Friday if the item is in the leaked ad? If that's possible, that sounds like a clever idea...

So has anyone managed to take the drive out w/o voiding warranty, or is it definitely impossible?
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You will not be able to price match or price adjust on BF at most stores. Bestbuy, CC, and most def frys will not do it. Pretty much discussed to death on other deals forums. The only one I have heard so far that may do it is Target and Walmart. I would check first and if you do buy something I wouldn't open it until I get the price adjusted/matched.

I took the drive out and you'll void the warranty. There hard drive is held to the case with four screws. Two you can access, the other two are hidden behind the stickers that you see on the back of the enclosure. One sticker has the S/N #, barcode, and model# and the other sticker says Warranty Void if Removed. You'll need to peel those back to get to the screws. Probably best to heat the sticker up with either a heat gun or a hair dryer and use a sharp razor to peel it back. I did well on one sticker and not so well on the other :( . So depending on how careful you are you might be able to get away with it and still have warranty. The drive inside however has about a 20 month warranty.
 
sn_85 said:
Probably best to heat the sticker up with either a heat gun or a hair dryer and use a sharp razor to peel it back.
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Be careful doing this. The plastic warps and melts quite easily. It took me less than 30 seconds with a hair dryer to warp the plastic on my first one. My next two went a lot smoother, but the sticker left the "VOID" mark.
 
DryFire said:
The lady who scanned my order gave me 10% off of everything, not just the drive ( I bought orange box to pricematch on friday).

On another note the drive gets very hot when left in the enclosure. I took it out right after formatting it and it was too hot to hold for prolonged periods. It's hitting 56 C right now while undergoing error testing. :(
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I noticed drives get obscenely hot without airflow. Trying out a 7200.10 and an AAKS drive, just sitting on top of a cardboard box formatting they both got BURNING hot to the touch with zero airflow - I think they were over 50C, which handily scared me. I aimed at 120mm fan at them from ~6" away - again, just sitting on the cardboard box - and they dropped to cool to the touch within a few minutes.
 
One would think all the temp issues are moot - these drives are designed to work at a certain level of temperature from the factory and are pretty damned tough pieces of hardware in the long run.

Why people bother so much with temps anymore is beyond me. I've never seen a machine simply fail for no reason other than "It was too hot" as long as the case has adequate and properly designed cooling. That doesn't mean "Oh, I can put 14 fans in mine so I did it."

That doesn't ensure proper and adequate airflow, taking cold air in from the front/sides and venting it out the back. I've seen some nightmare fan jobs in PCs and it didn't help at all because the people always have that "more is better" attitude. Scary stuff, indeed.

But if you've built your machine right, and you have proper cooling and ventilation, normal operating temps for these high end monster drives is simply irrelevant in the long run.
 
I mostly got worried when I saw the AAKS running around 54C, and checking WD's site gave a maximum operating temp of 55C. :) I figure keeping some air across drives and letting them run in the low 30's instead can't hurt, at the very least.

I'm wondering if the price is dead or not yet - the BB site has it back up to $350 and out of stock, no instore pickup. I'm going to drive around a bit to check later, I think.
 
It's not so much that 56 C scared me, it was the fact that it still hadn't reached a steady state (it had slowly crept up to 58 before I stopped the error scanning). The site says the max temp is 65C which would mean the mid 50's are fine, but it's winter time now so ambient temps are cooler than they would be in the summer and the rest of the system was essentially sitting idle.

I don't want to cool it down to 30C or something silly. I just don't want it dancing around in the 60's.

As far as fans go, I have 4 in my case: 1 on the graphics card, 1 on my ultra-120, 1 on my psu and 1 exhaust fan. 1 intake fan won't mess up the airflow situation.
 
I just tried to RMA my Hitachi, turns out they can track the drive through the SN to tell if it was originally sold in an external enclosure. It was a good deal, but if I had known the warranty on the HD was void, I wouldn't have bought it.
 
skyline889 said:
I just tried to RMA my Hitachi, turns out they can track the drive through the SN to tell if it was originally sold in an external enclosure. It was a good deal, but if I had known the warranty on the HD was void, I wouldn't have bought it.
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did your HD die?
 
skyline889 said:
I just tried to RMA my Hitachi, turns out they can track the drive through the SN to tell if it was originally sold in an external enclosure. It was a good deal, but if I had known the warranty on the HD was void, I wouldn't have bought it.
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Why not put it back in the case and RMA it... or return it to the store?
 
It somehow set itself on fire, the SATA power input still works fine but something on the PCB for the Legacy input fried itself. :mad: It seems to be working fine but I told them I didn't want a drive that set itself on fire. They then politely told me that if it was still in the external enclosure, just send it back and they'd warrantee it, if not, the warranty's void. About the stickers, I got them off without any ripping but the VOID parts of the sticker that are cut into the back of the sticker stayed on the enclosure. Now I guess I'm just SOL if the HD dies, or I can just try sending it in without emailing them and hope they don't catch it but I doubt that would work.
 
skyline889 said:
It somehow set itself on fire, the SATA power input still works fine but something on the PCB for the Legacy input fried itself. :mad: It seems to be working fine but I told them I didn't want a drive that set itself on fire. They then politely told me that if it was still in the external enclosure, just send it back and they'd warrantee it, if not, the warranty's void. About the stickers, I got them off without any ripping but the VOID parts of the sticker that are cut into the back of the sticker stayed on the enclosure. Now I guess I'm just SOL if the HD dies, or I can just try sending it in without emailing them and hope they don't catch it but I doubt that would work.
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my best wishes, good luck. I hope everything works out well for you in the end, thanks for sharing with the community, should this problem be something us hitachi terabyte users should be cautious of?
 
Ive had mine in my comp for about 3 weeks or more running 24/7 with maybe a restart once a week. I havent seen any issuse at all. Another thing I have a fan in front of my hard drives to help keep them cool.
 
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