Toshiba 40 GB Laptop Hard Drive For 187 - Good Deal?

[princer]

I have been looking for a new hard drive for a Dell C800 Laptop and found a good price on a Toshiba 40 GB hard drive. I went through Price Watch to House of Computers. They are selling them for 187.00 plus shipping (came to 203.41 shipped UPS Ground). Wanted to check with you guys to see if this was a good price and if the drive is reliable. I don't know much about laptop drives.

 

[Steve0]

I shopped for a laptop drive just last Friday and ended up buying the IBM TravelStar 40GN, 30GB hard drive for my IBM Thinkpad 380XD laptop, from Googlegear for $138 plus shipping. I haven't found much info on the web to compare the IBM against the Toshiba laptop hard drives, but I figured IBM was a safe bet for me. Googlegear also had the TravelStar 40GN, 40GB hard drive for about $20 more than your Toshiba.

House of Computers only gets a 3.1 (out of 7) at Resellerratings, so caveat emptor. Googlegear only gets a 4, but I've done business with them before, to my satisfaction.

FWIW...

Steve

 

[Mecheater]

dang that's a lot of HD space for a laptop

 

[Jeffd510]

why cant you guys just get cd's and back up you hard drive through cd's?

Just a question because that is what I do, and I think that the 20 GB is big enough

 

[Jugernot]

Jeffd510, it's called accessible porn! With a CD, it?s takes time to actually take it out of the holder and put it in the drive. No need with a HD.

 

[OTR]

<< why cant you guys just get cd's and back up you hard drive through cd's?

Just a question because that is what I do, and I think that the 20 GB is big enough >>



I actually do the opposite of what you suggest, I copy CD's to my hard drive so I can have them available all the time at 200x and use much less power. I use Fantom CD

I just got a Panasonic Toughbook with 20Gig drive in December and it is more than half full.

I do have a CDR but that's to transfer files. I remember in the old days, like '95/96, I used to run applications off my external Zip drive because my 200 MB HD was full.

 

[LivinLaVivaPollo]

I use my 80gig firewire enclosure into the good ol Sony.:Q

 

[princer]

Thanks for the heads up on the merchant. I decided to read the reviews and go elsewhere. My DH is going to be very happy with his new toy! I went with the IBM drive you ordered instead of the Toshiba. NewEgg.com had the IBM 30GB drive for 134.00 + 7.00 FedEx shipping. I have ordered from them before and had no problems. BTW he plans on using the second drive for training purposes when he travels out of town. I ordered the modular bay to be able to swap the hard drive out with the floppy drive from Dell. What a pain that was to locate the right part numbers!

 

[Steve0]

Careful there, princer. I checked price at newegg, too, but all they had was the older TravelStar 30GN, 30 GB hard drive for $134.

At Googlegear, they have the same TravelStar 30GN for $135.99, but they also have the newer TravelStar 40GN for just $2 more.

What's the difference? All the specs, save for areal density and maximum media transfer rate, are the same, making the 40GN the slightly faster hard disk.

I went through two older TravelStar 20GN, 20GB hard drives in my ThinkPad, and they both became noisy after a few weeks' use. I figured the denser 40GN disk is more likely to run quieter than the 20GN I have now, and maybe even quieter than the 30GN. Anyway, for a $2 difference, I went for the more current product.

Steve

 

[princer]

Dang! Dang! Dang! I am kicking myself for not getting the newer drive. I try to be patient and gather as much info as possible. If only I had waited one more day.... It is hard to wait when ordering computer toys!

 

[hans007]

toshiba gap4018 is the drive to get. toshiba drives are quieter and fail less than ibm. i have a gap2018 on my laptop (20 gig version of the 4018 40 gig drive) and its quiet compared to the old 20 gn 20 gig it replaced . i've personally seen lots of dead 20 GN drives. it could just be that series though