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160GB SATA 2.5" in the UK?

drlunanerd

drlunanerd

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 14, 2004
1,698
179
I cannot for the life of me find anyone in the UK with 160GB SATA 2.5" hard drives in stock.

Not the Hitachi 5K160 or the Seagate Momentus 5400.3.

Does anybody know where one can source these drives in the UK?

I know OWC in the US has them in stock, but they work out rather expensive.
 
kingjr3 said:
Neither are SATA
Click to expand...

Very good point. Mea culpa. :)

In that case, the Hitachi drive — and also the Seagate — may have another product code. All I did was google the info given by the OP with a UK url specified.
 
Blue Velvet said:
Very good point. Mea culpa. :)

In that case, the Hitachi drive — and also the Seagate — may have another product code. All I did was google the info given by the OP with a UK url specified.
Click to expand...

Actually hes said Not - although the Hitachi SATA drive uses the same model number.
 
kingjr3 said:
Actually hes said Not - although the Hitachi SATA drive uses the same model number.
Click to expand...

We all make mistakes but here's an idea. Why don't you help the guy instead of having a pop at me? Huh? :rolleyes:
 
It's easy to misidentify the HK160 PATA for SATA. Even when you Froogle HK160 SATA, you get hits for stores that sell only the PATA version. I've posted the "good news" about 160 SATA availability two or three times, only to be corrected.
 
Eraserhead said:
Isn't this the right model (in the UK), it has the same model number as on macsales.com
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Yes, it is. But they have no stock unfortunately. I've asked another stockist and they don't reckon on getting any for at least 4 weeks.
 
I don't know whether this helps you at all but have you considered keeping your current drive in (presuming it's 100Gb or something) and adding a Freecom FHD-2Pro? I use a couple of 120Gb FHD2's, which are USB bus powered. Quite apart from the practical niceties, one advantage of having an external drive (FAT32 formatted) for me is that it's visible in both Windows and OSX.
 
Sesshi said:
I don't know whether this helps you at all but have you considered keeping your current drive in (presuming it's 100Gb or something) and adding a Freecom FHD-2Pro? I use a couple of 120Gb FHD2's, which are USB bus powered. Quite apart from the practical niceties, one advantage of having an external drive (FAT32 formatted) for me is that it's visible in both Windows and OSX.
Click to expand...

This is true, you can get a 300GB External for about £100 now, which is a pretty good deal...
 
Thanks for the tips, but I need a bigger internal drive. I already have externals (but actually need to buy some cases for them, but that's another story).

Obviously internal laptop drives are much poorer value than 3.5" ones, but that's the way it goes.

I wish OWC's shipping to the UK wan't so expensive (and we didn't get clobbered with VAT and import duty).
 
Eraserhead said:
This is true, you can get a 300GB External for about £100 now, which is a pretty good deal...
Click to expand...

Ah. I wasn't talking about those but rather the 2.5" USB drives. Easily slips into a bag along with the laptop, is powered via USB.
 

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just get an older powerbook ;)


but seriously, I have a colleague after exactly the same thing at the moment, they've been through all the channels here trying to find one.

It does seem strange that it was easy for me to get one for the older interface as soon as the drives came out ?????
 
Mass Hysteria said:
just get an older powerbook ;)
Click to expand...

I've got one thanks :p But I don't need to upgrade the drive in that.


but seriously, I have a colleague after exactly the same thing at the moment, they've been through all the channels here trying to find one.

It does seem strange that it was easy for me to get one for the older interface as soon as the drives came out ?????
Click to expand...

We're bring price gouged on SATA 2.5" drives at the moment, and availability is poor. The question is why? I blame all the new MacBook owners! ;)

Well if anyone finds any 160 giggers in the UK, please let me know, cheers.
 
I was searching for the SATA variant last week. Through Google I found that Norway have a fair stock of them...but the company I contacted don't/won't deliver outside Norway unless it's a large order.
 
2 months later and has anyone bought one of these drives from a UK supplier yet? I still can't find them in stock :(
 
Sesshi said:
Ah. I wasn't talking about those but rather the 2.5" USB drives. Easily slips into a bag along with the laptop, is powered via USB.
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I'd rather use a firewire 2.5" drive personally. They are faster and from all accounts, USB2 wasn't designing for sustained writes and it can drop bits and you'll end up with data errors.
 
CrackedButter said:
I'd rather use a firewire 2.5" drive personally. They are faster and from all accounts, USB2 wasn't designing for sustained writes and it can drop bits and you'll end up with data errors.
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The r/w speed of 2.5" drives make improvements marginal with FW at best, with a potentially higher drain on the batt. In terms of Win/Mac compatibility a USB2 drive has a higher chance of actually fitting.

And the thing about sustained writes and data errors - complete utter bollocks.
 
Sesshi said:
The r/w speed of 2.5" drives make improvements marginal with FW at best, with a potentially higher drain on the batt. In terms of Win/Mac compatibility a USB2 drive has a higher chance of actually fitting.

And the thing about sustained writes and data errors - complete utter bollocks.
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It does make a noticeable difference. Heck, it makes a noticeable difference with the 1.8" drives in iPods. Do an I/O speed test on a FireWire iPod and a USB2 iPod to see. With a potentially lower drain on the battery too as FW uses less CPU time than USB2. Add the benefit of being able to daisy-chain FW drives, without needing a hub, and it blows USB2 away.

The data errors thing is bull5h*t though, touche!
 
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