Thursday, May 15, 2008

50.7 cents per GB - WD External 2.5" USB-Powered Drive - WDMLZ3200CN

The going rate for consumer storage is $0.20/GB or less you say? Why pay so much?



Ah, but that's in 3.5" internal SATA drives. Once you're able to fit 320GB(298GB as reported by Windows) in a coat pocket without needing an additional bulky power adapter to lug around, you'll see the instant appeal of such a device.

Make sure you get one with a carrying case - which is to say - you'll likely buy the Western Digital My Passport™ Elite™ from Costco.

Starting today there is $30 off coupon in the Costco mailer on a 2.5" external 320GB drive(298GB as reported by Windows OS) - I spent $151.12 including tax today for mine. Comes with a carrying case and an LED capacity gauge on the side that lights up to indicate remaining capacity - 320gb of portable goodness.

You can sometimes ask the Customer Service desk at the warehouse for coupons if you don't have the mailer.

Otherwise you'll pay right around $160.95 to purchase online from Costco.

The device comes formatted as FAT32, which doesn't support files larger tha 4GB(2 32−1 bytes to be more precise), so format it with NTFS - that'll work with the latest *NIX & Windows OSes.

Disclaimer: I like Costco quite a bit.

5 comments:

Lars Rasmussen said...

For those who may not have a Costco membership Buy.com has a good price on this drive without the carrying case.

Anonymous said...

Great find. I'm *very* tempted to buy one.

Enjoyed the disclaimer about loving Costco. You know they're doing something right when their customers have that attitude. It's refreshing to see (in the world of non-existent customer service we live in).

Lars Rasmussen said...

Yep. Unlike other Warehouse stores {such as 54m'5 C|ub}, Costco allows items to be returned for cash without a receipt. Of course, Costco maintains a record of every item you've purchased in their database. The attitude that the customer is right seems to prevail there.

The other price club (mentioned in leet speak above) does _not_ support that same policy, even though they also maintain a record of all items purchased by their members.

Anonymous said...

It just important to mention that it's NOT 320Gig - it's in fact 320 thousand meg, so 298gig.

Lars Rasmussen said...

daemonia, I used the number 298 in my 50.7 cents per _gigabyte_ calculation, the title of the post.

I further mentioned 298GB(aka gig or gigabytes) in the fourth sentence of the post. Gibi vs Giga, while significant, is an expected lie from hard drive manufacturers. I just hope manufacturers continue to lie in a consistent manner.