If you’re in need of some vintage “high-capacity mobile storage,” get yourself over to the Walmart stores of Massachusetts. You can get some nice mint in package USB hard drives dating back to the early ’00s at comically high prices. [More]
hard drives
This Office Depot Sale Isn’t Much Of A Sale
By 2.25.13
Marie is in the market for a new external hard drive, and last week (before the Presidents’ Day holiday) she heard from an office Depot employee that just the item she wanted goes on sale frequently, and she should wait for one of those sales. Hurray! That’s just what she did. She waited for a sale, when an “instant rebate” brought the price down…to exactly the same price that it had been. [More]
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Can Get You VHS Tapes And The Greatest Hits Of 2007
By 10.18.12 — Updated: 8.15.13
Our readers aren’t just ordinary blog tipsters: you’re retail archaeologists. Consumerists across the nation explore discount stores and sale racks, searching for gems of outdated technology. You are the finders of ancient digital junk. You are the Raiders of the Lost Walmart. [More]
Make Your PS3 Run Faster By Installing An SSD Hard Drive
By 2.21.12
One of the more attractive features of the PlayStation 3 is that the hardware is designed to allow you to replace the hard drive with inexpensive, high-capacity models that work with laptops. Previously the only reason to upgrade was to get more storage space, but newer solid state disk (SSD) drives reportedly speed up the device. [More]
Upgrade Your Laptop's Hard Drive In 3 Easy Steps
By 1.16.12
If your laptop goes kablooie, or you just run out of space by filling it from totally legal downloads, it’s probably time to swap it out. The operation may sound difficult, but it’s deceptively easy. If you can handle a screwdriver, you’re more than capable. [More]
Only Samsung Has The Power To Reinstall Windows On Your Laptop
By 9.16.11
When the hard drive of Joseph’s Samsung laptop began to make clicking noises, he thought it would be simple enough to make a backup image of his hard drive, install a shiny new solid-state drive, and put the backed-up image on his new drive. This didn’t work, and he’s stuck without Windows on his drive. Now he yearns for those long-ago days when computer manufacturers actually shipped copies of the software installed on computers with those computers. [More]
The Magical Chinese Hard Drive
By 4.8.11
A customer walked into a Russian hard-drive repair center complaining about his broken 500Gb USB-drive. He had bought it dirt cheap in China but it had a problem. If you saved a movie to it, it would only play the last five minutes. They opened up the case and found inside a 128-MB flash drive working in looped mode. It displays the correct capacity when you plug it in but when you write to it and run out of space, it just overwrites the old data. Two nuts make it feel like it has the right heft. Crafty, crafty counterfeiters! Caveat emptor, if the price is “too good to be true,” it is. [More]
Scammers Tell Guy Hard Drive Has Virus, Bilk For $6 Million
By 11.10.10
We’ve just found a tech repair service worse than the Geek Squad. [More]
Hallelujah, Microsoft To Finally Allow Xbox 360 USB Storage
By 3.19.10
In a savvy move that helps defray one of the big knocks on the Xbox 360 — that its storage options are limited — Microsoft will release a firmware update that allows gamers to store games and saves on portable devices, up to 16GB in size, that connect to the console via USB, Joystiq reports. [More]
Warning: Your Older MacBook's Hard Drive May Self-Destruct At Any Time
By 2.25.10
You should be backing up the data you keep on your laptop in case of hardware failure, theft, or an unexpected cup of coffee on your keyboard. This bit of common computer sense has a bit more urgency if you own certain MacBooks sold in 2006 and 2007, since their hard drives may fail suddenly with no notice. Fortunately, Apple has a free repair program: but only until the computer is (at most) four years old, and only once your hard drive has already failed. [More]
Amazon's Frustration Free Packaging Still Not Quite Working Out For Electronics
By 2.24.10
Tom wishes Amazon would use better packaging when it comes to shipping things like hard drives. Their “frustration-free packaging” is meant to save shoppers from dealing with blister packs and unnecessary boxes. For the Western Digital hard drive Tom was trying to buy, it meant bouncing around a half-empty box from the fulfillment facility to his doorstep, where it arrived broken. Twice. [More]
Microsoft Won't Let Me Transfer My Xbox Hard Drive Data Because Of Registration Error
By 2.5.10
Ben says he bought a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 with a 250GB hard drive so he could transfer saves and downloaded content from his full old hard drive to a new one. [More]
Best Buy Sells Box With Wrong Hard Drive, Shrugs
By 1.24.10
Tony writes that he purchased a Western Digital hard drive from Best Buy this weekend, but not the hard drive he had thought. When he opened the box, he discovered that it contained a different hard drive entirely–not quite a Box of Crap, but still not what he had paid for. But Best Buy stood firm, admitting there was nothing they could do. [More]
Don't Get Cat Vomit On Your Laptop
By 1.20.10
Tayler’s cat and Tayler’s MacBook Pro just had an unfortunate run-in. Does anyone have any advice on cheap ways to repair this laptop, or at least how to get the content off of it without paying hundreds of dollars? [More]
Best Buy Responds To Fury Of Internet, Decides Not To Hold Data Hostage
By 9.14.09
Remember that couple who tried to get Best Buy to fix their CD drive, only to have lost all their data and be charged $1,500?
Data Recovery Corp Invents Terms To Convince You Your Hard Drive Is Broken
By 9.4.09
Fox 11 News in LA went undercover with an intentionally damaged hard drive to find out whether online complaints about Data Recovery Corp, Inc. were true. Can you guess what the result was?
Seagate CSR: "Since You Know Better Then We Do, Im Sure You Dont Need Our Assistance"
By 6.14.09
If Seagate tells you to call Microsoft for technical support, don’t talk back or you’re going to get an earful. At least that’s what reader K. learned when he called to ask why his external drive worked well under Vista, but not XP. Seagate’s customer service representative immediately blamed the problem on Microsoft, and when K. tried explaining why the problem might lie with Seagate, the CSR responded: “Well since you know better then we do, Im sure you dont need our assistance.”
Best Buy Sells 9-Year-Old Discontinued Hard Drive As Brand New Western Digital, Refuses Refund
By 4.11.09
Jon spent $250 on a Western Digital VelociRaptor but what he received from Best Buy was a Quantum Fireball, a discontinued hard drive that hasn’t been sold for nine years. Best Buy, of course, took no responsibility for the odd swap, and said that Western Digital must have accidentally sold a competitor’s discontinued drive. Western Digital, of course, said that a Best Buy employee stole Jon’s hard drive. We’ve seen this happen before with Best Buy, and Jon has made it clear that he knows how to bite back…
