Filed under: Deals
One-day deal on WD 250GB portable drive
Got some data cleanup plans for the Labor Day weekend? I know I do -- there are scads of vacation pictures, silly videos and MP3s that have got to get gone from my laptop hard drive and onto some standby storage. That's why I was excited to see Amazon's one-day deal (8/28 only, probably cutting off at midnight PT but I can't be sure) on the Western Digital 250 GB Passport drive: $90US, and eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime. Giga-licious, although 250 GB isn't as big as it used to be...I've gotten plenty of reliable use out of my own identical WD 250 Passport, which has a bus-powered USB port and a sleek black finish (makes it kind of hard to see on my desk, but that's another matter). No other connection to WD or Amazon, except as a satisfied customer. I believe the drive ships formatted with cross-platform FAT32, but as all savvy Mac users know, you're best off reformatting as HFS+ when you get the drive -- otherwise you'll be cringing when you try to copy those larger-than-4-GB video files that FAT32 doesn't support.
If you're looking for more Labor Day deals, buzz by dealmac.com for the latest updates and discounts.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
waiownsyou said 6:46PM on 8-28-2008
That's a great deal, but they're going for $80 or less on eBay brand new...
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Matt said 7:10PM on 8-28-2008
Lukewarm deal. I got a the same drive in 320gb for 90$ last month. Leave the deals to fatwallet/slickdeals please.
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tpp said 7:36PM on 8-28-2008
Do not buy external WD hard drives.
WD claims they have great warranties (in some cases upto 3 years), but when you try get one warranty repaired all of a sudden things start happening.
For example, the two WD external hard drives bought from dell.com that crapped out on me are out of warranty, because WD claims they were sold in Europe.
So rather than play phone/fax/email tag with their RMA creeps, who never seem to answer, I'm just going to buy other brands from now on.
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Steve said 7:43PM on 8-28-2008
Newegg sells a 500 GB MyBook for $98... Twice the storage for a faster but bulkier drive that only costs $8 more. The Passport line is very small if you need portability though.
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Simon Arch said 9:04PM on 8-28-2008
It's not bus-powered though, which the WD drive and others like it are. We're sacrificing capacity for portability here.
My wife just bought a 320gb Iomega drive, otherwise I'd buy one of these.
TigerPro said 8:16PM on 8-28-2008
Could I take this apart and use the drive in my 13" MacBook? And would that void my warranty?
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Simon Arch said 9:06PM on 8-28-2008
In the MacBook, no, you're not voiding your warranty. That's only true for the MacBook Pro. Replacing the drive on a MacBook is a snap.
Remove the battery, unscrew the piece of metal which covers the RAM slots and the hard drive bay, pull out the drive, switch it for the new drive and put everything back.
Will said 10:47PM on 8-28-2008
You probably could, but you're better off just getting a 2.5" hard drive. The one linked below ought to work, and it's $55 after the $20 mail in rebate.
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10005896
Simon Arch said 1:19AM on 8-29-2008
@Will - Nice! Now how to convince my wife...
Scott said 9:31PM on 8-28-2008
As long as its a SATA 2.5 drive in the WD you should be able to remove it from the enclosure and put it in your Macbook.
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Andre said 9:40PM on 8-28-2008
I believe this drive is $89 at Costco Canada (in store).
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LR said 10:11PM on 8-28-2008
Buy.com has a Fantom GreenDrive 500GB USB 2.0 and eSATA External Hard Drive on sale for $74.99 (after rebate).
http://tinyurl.com/6fstxw
Lance
http://www.homeeducateinthesunshinestate.com/blog
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funesean said 11:11PM on 8-29-2008
This deal might already be dead, but Powerbook g4 users should note that their computers dont put enough power through their usb ports to power this or most other bus-powered devices. you can buy a powered usb cable but that makes this deal even less exciting. As one who still is using their G4 as their eveeryday computer i had to find this out the hard way.
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brianna said 2:39AM on 8-29-2008
i had a 500GB one of these and it died after barely a year of use -- avoid!
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Mercury said 1:46PM on 8-29-2008
I had one just crap out on me as well, they are apparently very unstable.
Viper007Bond said 4:37AM on 8-29-2008
Has TUAW never heard of Newegg? They have certain colors for the exact same price (or a little more) every single day of the week and when they go on sale, they're even cheaper. Hell, they have 1TB internal 3.5" drives for $140 right now.
Source: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150414%2050001306%201036007801%20131021354&bop=And&Order=PRICE
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Quine said 5:29AM on 8-29-2008
a lot of these comments don't really know their stuff. this is a portable hard drive, meant for traveling (aka it's a laptop hd, thus much more resistant to frequent movement damage) and it's bus powered, so no external power supply needed.
this is a totally good deal if you want this size and color. newegg will randomly match this price but rarely beat it, and they're not discounting black right now so you'd have to want orange to get the discount.
and i'd like to voice my experience with WD hard drives: two my books, a 2 and a 1.5 year old one (one essential, one premium edition), both working flawlessly still. WD has very good reliability, everyone has a few failed hd's.
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goingtoalpha said 12:49PM on 8-29-2008
We bought 6 of these for work over the past 6 months. Every single one of them is now dead, and Western Digital wont return e-mails or calls from our purchasing department in regards to the waranties on the units.
2 of the drives died on the first day we had them. If I trusted these at all, that would be a good price. We paid about $115 a piece for them.
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bob said 7:51PM on 8-29-2008
they are $98 NOT $90 on Amazon
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