Found this on slickdeals.com. Looks like a good deal, puter gurus.....is it?? :help:
Circuit City (in-store only) has Western Digital 200GB ATA/IDE hard drive for $100 with a $40 rebate and a $30 rebate for the final price of $29 with applicable taxes. The drive is also available online for in-store pickup only , but for $40 more, so your best bet is to go to a store directly.

It would be a good deal under three circumstances:

1) You are not using it for important data (Western Digital drives aren't really reliable anymore)

2) If those rebates are instant rebates and not mail-in rebates.

3) If it has a 3yr warranty on the drive (Western Digital and Maxtore normally have a crappy 1 year warranty whereas Seagate carries a 5 yr warranty - see note on #1 above).

These days you are lucky to get your mail in warranty check. I filed for over $250 in rebates last year for hardware purchased at the office and I have not received a single check yet. Basically you gotta photocopy your submission and start calling to harass them if it doesn't come back in 3 months.

When I consider that I can get one of their 3yr warranty Caviar line hard drives for $88 from Newegg, I would probably not go with the local store purchase (link to that deal: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144129 )

In most cases when you send a mail in rebate in, what you are doing is giving them your information so they can sell it to advertisers. Never put a home phone number on a mail in rebate form. Use your cell phone number or leave it blank.

Well, that explains why I'm getting all these damned credit offers to my office.

[QUOTE=shifty]It would be a good deal under three circumstances:

1) You are not using it for important data (Western Digital drives aren't really reliable anymore)

:agree: my brother had a western digital drive the drive burned up and he sent it back acoording to western digital they could get his stuff off the drive and puyt it on a new drive took them 3 months tog et the drive back because it sat in their warehouse for 2 months and they wouldn't drive 2 blocks to get it and well he got the drive back no info on it lost everything but the new drive onyl alsted about 5 months

i dont know if your computer supports sata but this is the drive i just ordered the other day they are much faster http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1197385&Tab=7&NoMapp=0

Are the Hitachi drives any good?

I just refurbed a 250GB Hitachi 2 weeks ago, it died in less than 2 months of use at the office. I bought it at CompUSA. Their laptop drives suck for sure - I've replaced 6 of them in 2 years.

I'll tell you three things about Hitachi: One, they also only have a 1yr warranty on everything - this was recently reduced from 3yrs to 1yr jusst like Maxtor and Western Digital. Tell you anything about their opinion of their product? Two, they bought their hard drive technology from IBM. Three, IBM had a class action lawsuit against them for the Desktstar (aka "Deathstar") drives, namely the 75 GXP and the 60 GXP - if you want more info, Google for GXP Deathstar lawsuit. I was on that bandwagon, my drive died 5 times before kicking the bucket. I lost so much data it was disgusting. :(

Hitachi is still using the "Deskstar" name too! :lol:

PS - their refurb service is slow. 3 weeks later, I still don't have a replacement drive. Western Digital may crap out just as frequently and have a crappy warranty, but at least they get you the drive ASAP.