To buy or not to buy, that is the question

I almost got snookered by Office Depot. I thought this was a really good deal. $59.99 for a portable external hard drive with 160GBs. I mean it is at first glance but if you did some research, you'd find it's not.

I went to my local store after work today thinking I might get lucky and pick up one of these Toshiba 160GB Portable hard drives but they were all out of stock in the store. I headed to Fry's to get some other things that I knew wanted to get there but all the while thinking I needed to get home to get online and purchase this drive before it is out of stock online as well.

On my drive home I started thinking, "Do I really need this?" and "Do I really want just 160GB?" I already have a few Western Digital Passport portable hard drives in the sizes of 320, 250(2), 160, and 120(2). The 120 and 160s have filled up fast with all my music, photos and videos for my Zune and Zen W. The 250 is very close to filling - about 20GB left - and the 320 holds way more and has about 20GB left as well.

Anyway, it hits me that I saw in Best Buy's weekly ad a WD 320GB Passport portable hard drive for $129.99. I think they had the 320GB Toshiba model for the same price.

So, I check back at OfficeDepot.com and what do I find? The 320GB Toshiba for $129.99.

What looked like at good deal at $59.99 for 160GB really isn't (unless you really want two 160GB hard drives) when you can get one 320GB hard drive for a tad over twice the 160GB. I prefer one drive at the higher capacity. Also, I have had external hard drives in various form factors from Maxtor, Fantom, and Buffalo that have all crapped out on me. It's either the drives themselves or the casing with the circuit boards and such that go bad. The Toshiba portables have gotten good reviews and I would buy them if they were much cheaper than the Western Digitals but since they aren't and I've used the WD Passports without issues, I'll get one of them.

Moral of the story: I really didn't need another external hard drive but if I did, it's good to effectively price compare to make sure you are getting a good deal.

So, that's my story!