I am looking at building up a Windows Media Center PC. I want a 1TB hard drive or better. I have noticed the 1TB hard drives are selling for well above $100 US.

I know the flooding last year in Thailand has really boosted the price of hard drives. I really have not kept an eye on prices. Does anyone know if $129 US is a bit high? Any idea when it will be coming down?

I am on no real hurry to buy so I can wait a bit.

 

$129 US is a bit high, but not outrageously so. I get my pricing information (usually) from Costco. You can find 1 TB drives for less than $100 at times, but I'd be leery of their reliability. They are manufactured in lower Elbownia, or some such place.

 

$129 US is a bit high, but not outrageously so. I get my pricing information (usually) from Costco. You can find 1 TB drives for less than $100 at times, but I'd be leery of their reliability. They are manufactured in lower Elbownia, or some such place.

Maybe I sure clarify. When I meant high, I meant high because of current conditions. In other words are we still in a "hard drive drought" forcing the price up.

 

Yes. I believe we are.

Most vendors are on very short supply and deals are hard to find.

 

Here's a shameless plug for Tiger Direct, where I buy all my stuff:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...sp?CatId=8&cm_re=Homepage-_-Spot 27-_-CatId_8

 

Yep I discovered this just before Xmas. I managed to grab a 1TB drive for £80 in the end and I was very happy with that cos everywhere else I looked was a lot more. It just happened to be on special offer at the time.

 

Am I exaggerating when I buy only Western Digital products for my storage needs? I pay the price, but I believe I get the maximum lifespan for my data.

Obvious hijack is obvious.

 

I work in a hard-disk intensive field, where systems typically have 100 SAS drives (1TB or 2TB), RAID 6. There is definitely a drive shortage.

I picked up a couple of hard drives for my own system near the end of 2011, and glad I did. I bought a 2TB WD external, and a 1TB WD Caviar Black SATA 600 internal—the latter cost me $86.99 plus tax. I'm looking at the same store (Mac/PCMall), same drive now...$256.99.

 

I work in a hard-disk intensive field, where systems typically have 100 SAS drives (1TB or 2TB), RAID 6. There is definitely a drive shortage.

I picked up a couple of hard drives for my own system near the end of 2011, and glad I did. I bought a 2TB WD external, and a 1TB WD Caviar Black SATA 600 internal—the latter cost me $86.99 plus tax. I'm looking at the same store (Mac/PCMall), same drive now...$256.99.

Thanks codehead. Since you are in the "biz" , have you heard anything when prices might start coming down again?

 

Thanks codehead. Since you are in the "biz" , have you heard anything when prices might start coming down again?

I haven't kept up on world manufacturing conditions, but the drive manufacturers expect shortages to continue through 2012. Seagate expects supply to be 150 million short of demand by the end of the year. (Seagate's factories weren't hit—they are just being impacted from parts suppliers that are hit.)

 

For a media center consider a smaller SSD for the OS and get network drive for all space hogging media .

The benefits of SSD in a media center are the much lower power usage when streaming and the fast boot/shutdown makes it more like a DVR when you use a remote.
And you don't hear the HDD spinning during quiet or silent scenes in movies.

Then stream all of your stored media from network drive to the media center or anywhere around the world via web portal.

As far as capacity vs price im not sentimental, i ditch video after i watched them couple times..
And mp3s take next to no space, so 500GB network drive and 60GB SSD is what i have for my media center rig.
Oh, and watch Craigslist i got my 500gb network drive for 45$ last year it was nearly new, as the guy couldn't figure out how to make it work .

 

Yeah I will get an SSD eventually but for now it is going to be a hard drive. I am going to have to wait till prices come down a bit.

I'm planning on DVRing locally broadcast shows and fill that in with internet content. I don't have a whole ton of bandwidth so the more local I can get the better.

I hope to ditch the Direct TV. A lot of money for very little content.

 

If you won't have any critical data on the HDD then go for a used 5400rpm in IDE flavor, those are a dime a dozen on the fleabay and craigslist.

And yes direct TV is a joke unless you are a sports nut

I got hulu+ and netflix streaming so i can watch on my xbox, media center,laptop @work.

Most all networks are offering streaming of some sort these days wont be long before all data is carried on the net exclusively.

 

Can you get current shows with hulu+

One of my favorites is The Walking Dead.

I don't want to give that one up.

 

Nope

Buuuut you can get complete runs of many other shows

For the last two weeks my GF and i have been watching law and order svu...
swear she has said"men are pigs" 10 times at least lol.

Last month we watched every x-files ever made...the truth is out there..

Most curent shows are staggered by one day, if its on tv mon. it's on hulu plus tue.

For 8$ a month it's cheaper then buying complete series of just one show

For movies there is Netflix which has alot of my fav discovery shows and older classics.

For everything else..well you know it's all out there streaming or bittorrent.

Speaking of sharing , you can set a network drive to do all of the sharing to save cpu cycles on the pc

-luvv-

 

Not being able to watch the Walking Dead would suck.

 

Netflix has season one

But we both know it's all out there somewhere...

Won't mention any sites but yea plenty of free TV to be had

 

Netflix has season one

But we both know it's all out there somewhere...

Won't mention any sites but yea plenty of free TV to be had

I wouldn't know where those sites are and not sure I would trust them.


I thought you could view the Walking Dead Dead on AMCs site if you had an account on one of the content providers but I am not seeing it.

Do you know if you can record streaming media to be viewed later? I have tried it but I think they make it impossible to record for license issues. It would be nice to be able to record because I have a slow connection.

 

You can indeed use screen capture software to record streaming content but legality of doing so i would not know.