Get a 4-terabyte external hard drive for $119.99
This mammoth Samsung drive features auto-backup software and a three-year warranty.
Even as we shift to cloud-powered everything, there's a need for local storage. You've got ever-expanding music and photo collections, to say nothing of all that sweet video you're shooting with your new quadcopter. Heck, maybe you're still old-school when it comes to movies, ripping Blu-ray and DVD discs for the ultimate home-theater PC.
This stuff needs a home. And homes don't get much bigger than this: For a limited time, Newegg has the Samsung D3 Station 4TB USB 3.0 hard drive for $119.99, shipped. That's after applying coupon code EMCPBWB225 at checkout.
Four terabytes. Four. In my younger days, I worked for a mail-order computer company, and I remember vividly the day we started offering a 250-megabyte drive for $250. It was a big deal. /memorylane
Anyway, the D3 Station is your basic monolithic desktop drive (meaning it requires its own power supply), one with a USB 3.0 interface (natch -- can you imagine trying to fill this thing up over USB 2.0?!) and preloaded backup software. It's not clear whether this last is for Windows, Mac, or both, but the drive itself is compatible with both.
Samsung backs the drive with a three-year warranty, which is little consolation if it dies and takes all your data with it -- but I certainly get more peace of mind from three years of coverage than I do from one.
That said, be sure to check the user reviews. They're very positive overall, but a handful of buyers did run into problems -- most notably with older versions of Windows. (As I recall, there are limits to the maximum contiguous space that a 32-bit OS can access.)
My advice: Put this (or any) drive through its paces for a few days -- or even weeks -- before offloading critical data to it. And if you're using it for full-system backups, run tests to make sure your PC can boot from it -- always an iffy proposition depending on your BIOS, Windows version, etc.
Your thoughts?
Bonus deal: You know that cool tilt-shift effect that makes certain photographs look like miniature scale models? You can create that effect using an expensive lens -- or with software. Today only, SharewareOnSale has Artensoft Tilt Shift Generator (Win) for free. Regular price: $49.95. Note that it's offered without updates or tech support, and you must download, install, and activate the program today, before the giveaway expires. But what a great way to experiment with this cool effect!