My Passport offers high capacity in a sleek portable drive. It features ultra-fast USB 3.0 connectivity; automatic, backup software; and password protection and hardware encryption to help protect your files from unauthorized use with plenty of room to store all your files.
CamelCamelCamel.
Thanks, updated the title. Still a decent price. You could also OW price beat, or do they only allow it for Aussie stores?
no way will they price match an overseas store…
Okay, just checking. I didn't know the terms of an OW price match/beat.
Hmmm… it doesn't actually mention they must be Australian… It just says it must be a 'competitor'…
So I guess you can try, but I'd be very surprised if they do price match…
Actually, OW will price match Amazon, and any other online seller, but you have to include the cost of delivery in the price. I personally have done it 3 times with Amazon deals. I don't have the receipts handy, as I'm at work. I find the people on the consoles ususally refer it to their supervisor/manager, but I have not yet been knocked back (although I've read about a few people who have - though I'd say they didn't stand they ground very well).
Previous similar example (see 3rd comment by max23): http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/70161
Be nice to the staff, and take a print out of the final page of amazon checkout process, and a copy of the Officeworks policy in case they argue with you (http://www.officeworks.com.au/retail/content/Lowest-price-gu…).
You are totally wrong mate. I called OW online and they said they would match Amazon and check the cost of delivery. Since the delivery of Amazon is expensive, I asked would they match it in the store and they said yes. I went to Hornsby , NSW OW and they price matched it. However, I did not get the 5% (couldnt care less) since the product code on amazon was different than office work. I just bought a WD TV live stream from OW.
OW price was $135 and I got it for $89.99 price match with amazon
It usually takes me a few minutes of arguing just to get them to price match MSY — and that's an Australian store with a retail location the next suburb over. Good luck with an overseas store ;)
Called up and OW said they would only price match Australian websites and stores
very tempting.
correct me if im wrong but didnt Hitachi have issues with their hdd crashing a while ago?
In fairness, almost every HDD manufacturer has troubles at one point in time. For Seagate, that's once every year :P
"Every dog has his day".
Hitachi is part of WD now.
I've got oooodles of WD gear, love it to bits. But I agree with you. For me to buy gadgets from abroad, it needs to be a SERIOUS discount. When a HDD dies, it's horrible. Overseas postage & warranty issues too… ARGH
I bought one in Australia and I had to send it to Singapore.
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5 TB USB for $119 is not too bad as well.
Even the 1TB is US$6.25 cheaper (than the WD). Some great options, for those interested.
I think WD has a better quality and is more reliable, particular the passport series. Anyone has more experience?
i've got 4 different passport drives and never had a problem… the oldest one is about 4yo…
good way to keep prices and profits high, buy out the competition…
I still have a 1tb wd from amazon bought last year, still running strong.
but seriously if it cant even last one year without crapping out and losing all your data then there's gotta be something wrong with WD.
Don't mean to take out on you or anything but kinda reminds me of a mate of mine was going on about how great his new car is because it hasn't died in the one and a half years (6000km) that hes owned it. Even alfas are fine in that kind of time
Also, does anyone know whether this one can be re-formatted for Xbox 360 slim?
Doubt it, there's only a small number of WD drives that can be used.
is this 7200rpm or 5400rpm drive?
Won't WD just make you send it back to Singapore anyway if you RMA it? No difference whether bought here or via amazon?
Correct.
I had to send one to Singapore a while ago.
Once they receive the drive then they posted a new drive(it looked new), i think couple weeks later or maybe more, can't exactly recall the time getting the replacement.
Exactly. It wasn't expensive a all to send it to SING.
Already bought 2 from amazon. Small and stylish devices. Also shipping times were less than 5 days. Probably it was shipped from a warehouse in Australia or somewhere closer than US
A former engineer at web host Rackspace, who deals with many drives, says that Hitachi drives were the worst when he worked there years ago; WD was the best. More recently, Backblaze, one of the best online back up services around, flat out said WD drives were bad and hitachi drives like those used in our drive choices, were the best. Drive makers definitely could have improved or lost quality over time as key quality control staffers left, says Robin Harriss, from Storage Mojo. But there’s another likely reason for the contradiction, and that is, maybe brand is not the biggest indicator of quality. There's no conspiracy–there's just no consistency. Robin Harriss thinks this is the case.
He suggests that the most reliable drives were not the ones that came from any particular brand because quality varies in batch to batch, model to model, and factory to factory. Another big factor is how drives were handled in shipping both to retailers and to the people who buy them.
…
Makes interesting reading …
The best information I found so far is from a little reported on report from a Russian Data recovery center that takes broken hard drives and pulls the information off of them. Such a center would have access to a number of drives of different makes and models and be able to diagnose the causes of failure (from user or design) and be able to see how the percent of failed drives matches up to the market share of each brand.
Their most recent report is dated June 2011, and was done from a sample of 4,000 drives. The first finding is that Seagate drives came in at over twice the average rate, considering how big their market share is. Seagate drives are the least reliable, according to Storelab.
The second finding is that Hitachi drives that were repaired were on average 5 years older than other drives. Everyone else averaged from 1.5 to 3.5 years.
The third finding is that out of 200 drives they repaired by Hitachi, none of the drives that Storelab repaired had failed from design rather than user inflicted damage.
Now $97.07 shipped. Just bought one!
ordered the 2TB version of this drive 2 weeks ago and received it 2 days ago.
i am experiencing problems with the drive staying connected on my windows 7 PC, similar to several posters on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R193PTXPKZTG5Z/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe…
http://www.amazon.com/review/ROIE284BWWDJH/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm…
no problems with recognising the drive on win 7, but when i start a large data write to the drive it it randomly disconnects and reconnects, resulting in an error message and termination of the transfer. it's not obvious what happened at first, because the drive was still shown in "My Computer", but it became apparent when i used diskmgmt to change the drive letter - i set it to G:, started the transfer, transfer terminated, and the drive shows up in "My Computer" as D: again.
no problems at all using it on my mac though, did a large backup without hiccups.
i won't bother with an RMA as i have another external drive to use with the PC, but PC users might want to keep this in mind.
Has anybody ever sent a faulty drive bought on Amazon back for repair? What happened?
Actually I had an isse with one from DSE and I had to send it to Malaysia
Mine is broken too and I just found out that I have to send it to Malaysia :( So did you get a replacement?
AUD 104.45 shipped.