Would you buy a "generic" 160GB hard drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter mr x
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mr x said:
Would you buy a "generic" 160GB hard drive?

CompUSA has a pretty cheap one after rebates

see
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=300018&pfp=hpf3#checkstore

I'd like to hear what people think.
Click to expand...

If you look around you can get as good a deal if not better on a non generic
drive at stores like Circuit City, Best Buy, Staples and Office Max. This
week in my area Office Max has a Western Digital 160 gig 8mb cache drive
after rebates for $59.99 Personally I would prefer to be able to look at the
label and be pretty sure who made the drive and who stands behind it and not
have to guess.

Hank
 
Would you buy a "generic" 160GB hard drive?

CompUSA has a pretty cheap one after rebates

see
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=300018&pfp=hpf3#checkstore

I'd like to hear what people think.
Click to expand...

Is it really generic though?
At one point I "thought" those were Maxtor drives, though today, i don't
know. You might also research the warranty period, it ought to be a
minimum of 1 yr. and I don't know what CompUSA's exchange policy might be
for something like that.
 
mr said:
Would you buy a "generic" 160GB hard drive?

CompUSA has a pretty cheap one after rebates

see
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=300018&pfp=hpf3#checkstore

I'd like to hear what people think.
Click to expand...

If you're going over 137GB (drive makers speak), or 128 GiB, make sure your BIOS
can support 48 bit LAB. And also make sure the OS can use a drive over 137GB.
This means WinXP with SP1, or Win2000 with SP3 or higher.

The best "bang for the buck" right now seems to be at 80GB. This is about the
limit for a single platter drive, and at 7200 RPM and 8MB cache, is a good deal.

Virg Wall
--

Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law
 
In message <<[email protected]>> "mr x"
Would you buy a "generic" 160GB hard drive?
Click to expand...

Sure, depending on what I was planning on doing with the drive. I've
been looking for a 80gig drive to backup my boot drives (RAID-0 2x36GB
WD Raptor drives) -- So in short, performance, specs, reliability, etc
on the backup don't matter.

I wouldn't trust a business critical drive to an unknown "generic" brand
though.
 
At one point in time, the packaging for "CompUSA drives" did say "by
Maxtor". My best guess of what is going on here is that you are buying
(rather randomly) Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi, Western Digital or whomever will
give CompUSA the best deal at the moment of the latest shipment. If you
have your "heart set" on a particular brand, I wouldn't depend on two drives
bought this way being the same brand and you ought to buy the particular
brand you want. OTOH, if you don't really care who makes it (I'm not aware
of a really crappy drive manufacturer right now) this could present a good
deal.
 
You generally get what you pay for. You don't pay much for a harddrive you
don't get much of a harddrive...
 
Would you buy a "generic" 160GB hard drive?

CompUSA has a pretty cheap one after rebates

see
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=300018&pfp=hpf3#checkstore

I'd like to hear what people think.
Click to expand...

In the past all the "generics" Ive ever seen at Compusa were Maxtors .
Im not sure why they call it a "generic". Maybe they do that so that
legally they can sell you a WD or something else in regions they dont
have maxtor inventory without asking everyone if they would accept a
substitute or something.
 
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