WD Caviar Green WD20EARX 2TB 64MB 3.5" SATA3 HDD $115 at Amazon

At a list price of $179.99 how can you lose? This sleek. Not last years model.... Not last, last years model.... can be yours for one easy payment of $115. THAT IS 36% OFF PEOPLE! You Save: $65.00

If only it was $65 that would be the better price.

I can wait.

I can wait too - I stock quiet a few when last time they were $60-$70 range.
*** For the one post me thumb down here - R U envious or jealous ? ****

Same here. Don't need but want...I can wait.

go with Amazon if you want it to arrive in one piece - Newegg's packaging is horrible!

Lol. Come on now... Newegg's packaging is not that bad. A little crumpled paper and a box with the HD in it with plastic end pieces to support it.

This is actually a good price. It's SATA III 2TB 64mb cache. You guys cant complain about this price. It's not SATA II with 32gb cache that was going for $80 last year.

I need to pick up a new drive soon. My HD test program says my Seagate Barracuda is at 40% reliability which means someday soon, it's gonna DIE!!!

sata II 32gb cache > sata III 64mb cache

then finally the sata III cables can be used how it's meant to be used

Do not forget about the new 2 year warranty on this drive too. The older drives had an old 3 year warranty but with this drive you get the new reduced 2 year warranty. I guess it go to show how much faith the manufacture has in their new drives. Funny the price does not reflect the new warranty but if you have a Seagate drive this may look pretty good.

Between Newegg and UPS it is amazing that any drive is working. When you call Newegg about an RMA for your damaged drive and the box is crushed, be sure to tell them about the condition of the box. They may change the return from an RMA to a UPS damaged shipment claim which will save you money on the return. If it is an RMA return, you have to pay UPS for the return shipping to Newegg, which is a win win for UPS because they get paid twice for the same package. Why not damage more shipments and make more money must be UPS idea of making more business for themselfs? It is a good deal for UPS. If Newegg makes it a shipping damage claim with UPS, UPS has to pickup the damaged package and UPS will return it to Newegg for free which saves you from having to pay return shipping on your damaged drive. Because of this, most of the time UPS does not want the damaged drive back and UPS will just pay to have Newegg ship out another drive. It will save you time and money in the end.

SATA II on a mechanical drive is purely a marketing gimick. Will do ZERO for performance because most 1st and 2nd generation SSD's can't even saturate SATA III. It may appear faster in short term burst speed, but anyone who claims their mechanical SATA III drive is faster is a moron. Helps you discern who really knows what they're talking about and the brain dead, live at home, Best Buy Geek Squad wannabees are. Manufacturers are only switching due to cheaper operating costs for stocking up on SATA III controllers.

^ The importance is it signifies a newer generation HDD, which may have firmware improvements, higher platter density, or other refinements. All else being as equal as possible, an SATA III drive does usually outperform its SATA I or II ancestor.

For your edification...

"SATA revision 3.0 (SATA 6 Gbit/s)

Serial ATA International Organization presented the draft specification of SATA 6 Gbit/s physical layer in July 2008,[9] and ratified its physical layer specification on August 18, 2008.[10] The full 3.0 standard was released on May 27, 2009.[11] It provides peak throughput of about 600 MB/s (Megabytes per second) including the protocol overhead (10b/8b coding with 8 bits to one byte). Solid-state drives have already saturated SATA 3 Gbit/s with 285/275 MB/s max read/write speed and 250 MB/s sustained with the Sandforce 1200 and 1500 controller. SandForce SSD controllers released in 2011 have delivered 500 MB/s read/write rates,[12] and ten channels of fast flash can reach well over 500 MB/s with ONFI drives a move from SATA 3 Gbit/s to SATA 6 Gbit/s allows such devices to work at their full speed. Full performance from Crucial's C300 SSD similarly require SATA 0 Standard hard disks cannot transfer data fast enough to require more than 3 Gbit/s. There are claims that they can nevertheless benefit from the later standard as reads from their built-in DRAM cache will be faster across the later interface.[13] According to Seagate "Cache-efficient desktop applications such as gaming, graphics design and digital video editing can experience immediate incremental performance using a SATA 6Gb/s interface". Drives with bigger, faster caches were introduced to benefit from the faster interface.[14] However, at least one benchmark shows near-identical hard drive performance of SATA 6 compared to SATA 3.[15]

The 3.0 specification contains the following changes:

6 Gbit/s for scalable performance
Continued compatibility with SAS, including SAS 6 Gbit/s. "A SAS domain may support attachment to and control of unmodified SATA devices connected directly into the SAS domain using the Serial ATA Tunneled Protocol (STP)" from the SATA_Revisio0Gold specification.
Isochronous Native Command Queuing (NCQ) streaming command to enable isochronous quality of service data transfers for streaming digital content applications.
An NCQ Management feature that helps optimize performance by enabling host processing and management of outstanding NCQ commands.
Improved power management capabilities.
A small low insertion force (LIF) connector for more compact 1.8-inch storage devices.
A connector designed to accommodate 7 mm optical disk drives for thinner and lighter notebooks.
Alignment with the INCITS ATA8-ACS standard.

In general, the enhancements are aimed at improving quality of service for video streaming and high-priority interrupts. In addition, the standard continues to support distances up to one meter. The newer speeds may require higher power consumption for supporting chips, although improved process technologies and power management techniques may mitigate this. The later specification can use existing SATA cables and connectors, although it was reported in 2008 that some OEMs were expected to upgrade host connectors for the higher speeds.[16]

The later standard is backwards compatible with SATA 3 Gbit/s.[17]

#6 what program do you use for that??

Also is AMAZON charging sales tax to CA yet?

After the cut and paste of the technical info, the real world speed difference between the older SATAII and the newer SATAIII on a 5400 rpm storage drives is pretty small. Post #10 is right as the items he has pointed out will make a bigger difference in speed then the SATA change will on this type of drive. What speed difference you see in real world performance will not justify the $35 price difference between the SATAII and the SATAIII drives. I would still take the $80 SATAII 3 year warranty drive over the SATAIII 2 year warranty drive and keep the $35 in my pocket if I was given the choice.

Can you be more specific...which one do you recommend over this one that's $35 less?

#13.... I use "Hard Disk Sentinel". All my drives with the exception of a Seagate 1TB Barracuda are shown to be functioning at 95% or better. The Seagate is now at 40%. When it goes to 25-30%, it's time for me to replace it..

HD Sentinel will go into details as to what potential danger will occur also.

Thanks #16, I was wondering what you used. Found a great deal on it for 40% off the professional version. Posts #'s 11 and 12 convinced me you knew your stuff.

Amazon just jacked the price to $130.

#18....NewEgg still selling it $115. ends today