w*******y
发帖数: 60932 | 1 OfficeMax has taken down their online page, but I just picked up my 4th
drive at lunch, so they seem to still be plentiful in brick & mortar stores,
perhaps because of the "limit 1 per customer due to flooding in Thailand"
signs on the doors. Picked up 3 from 3 stores near home Tuesday and then
the 4th from a store near the office today. Tag on the shelf shows the
advertised price from the circular ($119.99), but all 4 stores rang them up
at $94.99. Sale runs through Saturday, November 12th.
After hooking them up as external drives and making sure they successfully
transferred a 50GB folder to and from the drive, I powered them down and
voided the warranty by popping the cases open (okay, ripping them apart -
see the pictures... anyone who gets the drive out without destroying the
case would be better off performing neurosurgery than chasing down slick
deals), I found May 2011 HDS723030ALA640 64MB 7200rpm 6.0Gb/sec drives in
all 4 cases. That drive is currently $399.99 at NewEgg and $349.99 at Mwave
. At $95, it's one of the few 3TB 7200rpm drives to break the $100 barrier
even prior to the flooding in Thailand.
For those just looking for an internal drive:
No guarantee that the same drive is in all enclosures, but I was 4 for 4
from 4 different stores. If you do choose to open it, be sure to open the
left side when looking at the rear of the device (see picture). If you open
the right side, you'll find a large plastic tray blocking access and even
with 9 tabs holding the sides on, prying apart the other side will be easier
than messing with that tray.
Once you've removed the correct side, tip the enclosure and the drive and
the circuit board attached to it will slide out. Unhook the 2-lead LED from
that circuit board and it's free of the enclosure. There are 2 screws
holding the circuit board with the USB/power ports that were accessible from
the outside of the case that make sure the drive can't slip out of the SATA
/power connections on that board. Remove those 2 screws and slide the
circuit board off of the SATA port of the drive. Unfortunately it doesn't
sit terribly well on it's own, but you could plug a spare drive into it and
have an enclosureless external drive - wouldn't want it as a long-term
solution, but worth keeping around for emergencies. The drive itself has 4
rubber bumpers covering screws that provided some shock resistance and
vibration mediation when in the external enclosure. Pop them off and remove
the screws that are in the holes that you'll likely be using when mounting
internally - unfortunately they aren't the typical mounting screws, so you'
ll probably need to provide your own, but who doesn't have dozens of them
lying around anway... There's also an odd foil band wrapped halfway around
the drive. Never seen one like it before and not sure what purpose it could
have served.
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